Well, you’re wrong. While you are bound to encounter some wannabe wrestlers in the pits, back in the day they had REAL WRESTLING at shows. Don’t believe me? Here you go:
Yep, that’s Fear Factory at their prime, playing a show, and there are multiple simultaneous wrestling matches. Of course, all of this happens on a beach. Now that’s what I call hardcore. Is it me, or do Fear Factory sound more brutal in this performance? Perhaps it’s just the huge dudes beating the shit out of each other.
- NT
Sideblast
01. Cocoon
02. Barbarians
03. The Shape
04. Discordant Symphony
05. Demigod
06. Signs
07. Dirge
08. The Fall
09. Insomnia
10. Ashes
11. My Perverse Disguise
Just as I’m about to lambast 2011 for not delivering on the death metal front, Sideblast show up, blow me away (obvious pun avoided) and let me know that I’m just not looking hard enough. Of all places, France isn’t my first thought when it comes to modern death metal; even I remember a time when French metal was basically a joke, so it’s no wonder it took me this long to catch up on Cocoon. They’re a fairly new band to me, having only one previous album, but if there’s one thing you need to know about me, it’s my gigantic musical boner for Strapping Young Lad. Sideblast are pretty much channeling City and Alien with all their might and the music is definitely there; diet-Meshuggah chug sections, turn-on-a-dime tempo changes and ridiculous synths all jostle for space on Cocoon in a surprisingly tasteful way.
It’s weird that many of the best bands from France essentially take another fairly individual band’s sound and tweak it into a far more sleek version of the original. For instance, Gojira are pretty much the bastard child of Morbid Angel, and fellow country men Scarve also share a love for the heavier side of Devin Townsend. This isn’t meant in a bad or accusative way; I have no problem with imitators/tributes as there is genuinely nothing new under the sun anyway, but that’s merely an observation.
I did something crazy today. I was listening to music and instead of going to the Recently Added playlist that auto-updates based on songs I’ve recently added, I went to my full library. And you know what I did?
I fucking hit shuffle. Crazy, right?
And out of nowhere a song by Fear Factory came on. At first glance that’s nothing surprising since I love them, but it was a song off Transgression. You know, the album everyone seems to hate a little less than Digimortal. Nevertheless, I was astonished. I hadn’t heard anything off this album in ages (a year or two, at least). Even more freaky was the fact it was my favorite song off the album: “540,000 Degrees Fahrenheit.” This had to have been some wizardry. iTunes (lol, Apple) must have known this album was getting rusty. It must have! In any case, the second it began I was hit with a rush of nostalgia. Back in 2005 I bought it from some cheap CD store with an ultra ghetto black guy behind the counter scaring me shitless. My original plans were to buy some other CD, but then I noticed the infamous Fear Factory logo chilling on the “New Releases” shelf. You think I picked up the album I originally came for?
Fuck no.
2 albums in 2 years? Heck yes, I said. That was a great moment. Then I went home and brought out my boom box (I didn’t have my computer for a long time since I got busted for porn) and played that album for hours straight, reading the lyrics and just being a retarded kid thinking this was the pinnacle of Fear Factory. Hell, I even purposely bought the more metal looking Tech Deck (remember those?) figures just because I’d pretend they were the band. This and Archetype were my musical childhood (other than Slipknot).
Here’s the nostalgiafest for me. It’s amazing how I can remember every single word after not listening for a few years:
Apologies about the awful quality.
So, fellow readers, what bands/songs give you a rush of nostalgia? Post some motherfucking links in the comment box and let’s hear some stories. Maybe you’ll ignite even more nostalgia that’s buried underneath my plethora of songs.
-MK
Minnesota sumeriancore outfit After The Burial have just uploaded their 3rd pre production episode for their upcoming album:
Unsurprisingly, the new material is sounding pretty awesome. The album still doesn’t have a name or a release date but lets hope it comes out before too long. For now you can catch the band on tour with Fear Factory.
- PM
Like I mentioned last time, my metal roots were planted in nu-metal. Korn were a big part of my younger teenage years, and set me off in the right foot. During this time, I had also discovered another big name in nu-metal, Slipknot, nu-metal/metalcore band Ill Nino, and up-and-coming metalcore band Trivium. If Korn was my way of dipping in my toe to test the waters, this is the moment where I jumped in.
My experience with Slipknot came before these other bands. I’ve heard of them during my childhood and thought the masked metallers were creepy as hell (let’s face it, those outside of the metal scene think Slipknot are metal, as was the case when I first became aware of it.) I first heard “Wait and Bleed” on the Scream movie soundtrack that I found laying around the house. What I heard surprised me, as I didn’t expect a band that looked like that to play something that was remotely catchy. I listened to the song quite a bit, but never really bothered to seek out any more of their music for quite a long time.
The only thing I cared about is their cover of “Cars” with Gary Numan. The rest is just meh. I know they were influential and whatever, but I honestly don’t get why everyone’s popping e-boners over the “reunion”. I’ll just listen to Strapping Young Lad (which features half of the members of the current FF lineup) and Meshuggah, who did that whole industrial death metal/chuggy thing better, if you can call Fear Factory death metal.
Not only is the sound generally aged and boring, but to listen you have to navigate through the clunkiest site I’ve had to endure in a long while. You need a Facebook account to listen, and you have to unlock tracks by leaving comments spamming your friends on Facebook and Twitter. I listened to opening track “Mechanize” and gave up, because fuck that noise. Snap judgments are too damn easy.
If you still care, here it is. Meh.
- JR
