“I AM THE DISRUPTOR!” bellows departing vocalist Burton C Bell in full irony mode on the excellent Disruptor, one of the early singles from the new and very troubled Fear Factory album, Aggression Continuum. Of course, he recorded the vocals donkey’s years ago (in 2017 – fact-loving Ed.), so it’s not really an example of side-splitting post modernistic levity, but you know what I mean…

In fact, you might find yourself shedding a nostalgic tear as the soaring keyboard orchestrations that underpin the album’s title track rip out of your speakers; there’s a genuine sadness to the fact that Bell and longtime partner in heaviness Dino Cazares won’t be making music together anymore, particularly if you’ve heard this album, containing a it does some of the best music the pair have ever collaborated on. Cazares has vowed to continue with a new set of pipes in tow, but when you wallow in the quite superb sonics of Purity – the closest thing to a ‘pop’ hit the band have ever created – it’s hard to imagine that the quicksilver spark of greatness that clearly exists between this troubled pair could ever be replicated adequately elsewhere. As ever, I stand to be corrected, but I suspect I’ll be waiting a fair while…

Add to all this the inhuman drumming of Mike Heller – more machine like than yer actual machines, as it were, in a delicious twist on FF’s usual dystopian ‘the AIs are coming to replace us’ schtick – and you’ve got one of the absolute best Fear Factory Albums in a long, long time. Fuel Injected Suicide Machine is like a five and a half minute summation of the band’s early years from Soul of a New Machine to Obsolete – if it doesn’t lead to you looking out your old Demanufacture tour longsleeves then you’re not the FF tragic you claim to be – whilst the grinding Collapse reminds you that Cazares is hands-down one of the best groove metal riffmeisters of all time.

There’s an air of nostalgia to a lot of the material here in yet another ironic twist to proceedings – the ‘Factory being one of metal’s most forward thinking units, traditionally – but that won’t, or shouldn’t, detract from the fact that the music they are making is still boldly relevant in 2021. Nobody else makes a noise quite like Fear Factory, and it’s a shame that as listeners we’ll be denied the chance to listen to Bell’s trademark melodies soaring over the filthiest of Cazares’ riffs – as they do here on the belligerent Manufactured Hope – ever again.



Aggression Continuum releases on June 18th.