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Fear Factory: The Best of Fear Factory
One of the most admired and innovative extreme metal bands of the last 15 years finally has their own "best of" package, but the only catch is this collection contains just songs from their time with Roadrunner Records. Most fans who have followed the band all these years will no doubt already own these songs, so there's really no reason to knock yourself out and get this, but if you are new to the world of Fear Factory, this is a pretty good place to start, as you get a nice sampling of the band's sound as it evolved through the years. The first few songs are from the album Soul of a New Machine, which was pretty extreme and radical when it was first released in 1992, as it combined the styles of death metal and industrial like no band had ever done previously. Highlight here is the bludgeoning "Martyr", as well as "Scapegoat", both of which are longtime fan favorites. The Demanufacture period is given four spots here, which is great considering how strong that album is, and then four more from Obsolete, which for many is the band's greatest album, containing such classics as "Edgecrusher" and "Resurrection", the latter filled with some effective futuristic clean vocals from Burton Bell, and the former is simply a groove laden yet crushing guitar driven extreme metal anthem. Honestly, I'm not sure why they included the cover of Gary Numan's "Cars" here, and while "Linchpin" from the Digimortal album was released as a single, there are better songs that could have been included in this set. As a whole, it would have maybe made more sense to release this as a double CD, as while the song list is strong, it's still not fully comprehensive by any means. New listeners will also not get anything from the Archetype or Transgression albums, as the band released these after leaving Roadrunner.
Still, for a sampling of Fear Factory from 1992-2001, essentially the "Roadrunner" and "Dino Cazares" (their former guitar player) years, this is a decent place to start.
Track Listing
1. Martyr
2. Scapegoat
3. Scumgrief
4. Demanufacture
5. Self-Bias Resistor
6. Zero-Signal
7. Replica
8. Shock
9. Edgecrusher
10. Resurrection
11. Cars
12. Linchpin
Added: October 25th 2006 Reviewer: Pete Pardo Score: Related Link: Fear Factory Website Hits: 2256 Language: english
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Fear Factory: The Best of Fear Factory Posted by Ken Pierce, SoT Staff Writer on 2006-10-25 07:10:06 My Score:
Celebrating the releases that came out under their banner, Roadrunner Records is releasing several Greatest Hits packages of artists that have accomplished great things for Metal and eventually moved on to other Labels. The Fear Factory early catalog falls under this description and as result, we have this compilation. Looking at it, I felt that it was more geared towards a new listener and not a die-hard who would probably have all of their earlier music by now. Given the current roster the label holds with bands such a younger Metal forces Trivium and the dynamic Dragonforce, the great thing would find those fans digging the early Fear Factory stuff and trying the older CD's that are still currently available under the labels back catalog. These twelve tracks span from 1992-2001 and they feature the bands original guitarist Dino Cazares. It is a great "sampler plate" of Metal but with only the scant amount of songs will leave you wanting a bit more. Great moments are found in "Scapegoat" which is one of the group's best songs and I always liked "Demanufacture". A quirky but pretty close to the original cover version of Gary Numan's "Cars" rocks and shows that even one of the most brutal vocalists (Burton C. Bell) can groove to the classic New Wave sound. From that segment in history, it was one of my favorite songs, so I loved hearing Fear Factory do it. Historical liner notes are present in the booklet, which is more a foldout, and there are limited photographs. Some will review this as "money-grabbing" products but in truth, it makes a nice teaser for their material and serves a purpose. Fear Factory are one of the most influential groups around based on their use of Technical Thrash Metal and Industrial elements before anyone else was doing it. Listeners are encouraged to investigate the bands history with this and their older releases as well as their latest effort "Transgression".
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