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Apologies for the downtime yesterday – the site has been growing at an incredible pace, which has been overloading the server. A good problem to have, for sure, but it came to a head yesterday, and I’ve been up the whole night dealing with it. It’s about 6AM now, and I’m off to grab a little sleep before the daily grind.

I leave you with this – incredible footage of Godflesh, live in Schorndorf, DE, on March 30, 1990. The song is “Christbait Rising”. Streetcleaner is four and a half months old. No breakbeats, no major label deal, no human drummer, no Jesu yet. Just two guys, a drum machine (and I thought I was biased against drum machines live? Perhaps I should reconsider), and the entire weight of the VHS-poisoned ’80s collapsing into some basement. Justin Broadrick’s gauntness brings to mind Ian Curtis. Godflesh as the cyborg reincarnation of Joy Division? Amidst such bleakness, G.C. Green’s strap is an odd splash of color. I’ve listened to Godflesh for over 15 17 years (I just remembered my first Godflesh CD – Pure, in a longbox!) and have seen plenty of promo photos – I was quite the Broadrick obsessive back in the ’90s – but I have never seen Godflesh in motion. This is blowing my mind.

Also blowing my mind is the Redux Edition 2-disc reissue of Streetcleaner that recently came out. I have not consumed it so much as it has consumed me. I will write at length on it later. Since Streetcleaner is so personal to me, exploring the Redux Edition feels like going up the river to find Kurtz in the director’s cut of Apocalypse Now (also called Redux, incidentally). The journey leaves no one unscathed.

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Today’s “Riffage” contains none of the typical hallmarks of metal: no chugs, power chords, or palm-muted stabs. The riff of choice is Godflesh’s “Flowers” off of the fantastic and fantastically overlooked 1994 EP, Merciless. Justin Broadrick constructs this monolithic riff entirely out of open string harmonics, sampled from the outro to “Don’t Bring Me Flowers” off of 1992’s Pure LP. If that song is a march through the most traumatic human relationship, then “Flowers” is a bleak yet tranquil cross-section of that relationship. In focus, it’s beautiful like kaleidoscopic micro-fauna in a sewer rat’s fur.

[Audio clip: view full post to listen]

First things first: tune those strings down three semitones to C# (low to high: C#, F#, B, E, G#, C#). Beyond that, the focus is tone. A crisp ’90s-style metal distortion will suit best. Justin Broadrick employed the low-end-less Boss Heavy Metal pedal for his distorted tone. (Note: I like JB’s guitar sound on those old records, but objectively, the HM is one of the shittiest high-gain pedals ever made). Distortion (not fuzz or overdrive) is the key to getting those harmonics going on for days with piercing clarity. Make sure you’re on your bridge pickup for maximum brightness and sustain. You want that tone where harmonics sound easily and loudly from the slightest finger contact – there’s a huge difference if you go the extra mile dialing in your sound.

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This track is one of Godflesh’s most haunting, as the more abstract and un-rock Godflesh tracks generally are. It’s easy to see why 20 years ago everyone was either stealing from Broadrick’s playbook or trying to recruit him. He was importing a devolved aesthetic from post-punk anti-shredders like Joy Division and Swans into heavy rock, and the resultant sound blew everyone’s mind. Godflesh were a neat coda to the (temporary) obsolescence of ’80s thrash, and a springboard for what would come next: a reassessment of the concept of “heavy”, a moratorium on technicality, low tunings, and a slightly warmer attitude towards the punk aesthetic. Sure, the ’90s left us with some bad metal, but the ripest fruits from Godflesh’s tree fell in the Aughts: Sunn O))), Converge, and Isis all studied at the Broadrick Academy of Riffing while forging their own paths. Merciless was my introduction to the band, reminding me then as it does now of the absolving power in primitive stabs of guitar. Keep your reverence: take a break from running scales to simply worship sound.

Next time, I’ll resume my accidental theme with another legendary Earache artist. I’ll be digging a little deeper exploring variations within a song. Until then, happy riffing!

Fear Factory’s albums and imagery are strongly based on science fiction, particularly dystopic tales about machines taking over the Earth and subjecting mankind to slavery and imprisonment. Much of this fixation comes from vocalist Burton C. Bell, who converted his childhood fantasies into lyrics and stories that have been the backbone of Fear Factory for two decades. Their 1998 album Obsolete is best known for a cover of Gary Numan’s song  “Cars”. What you might not know is that the album’s concept – a man vs. machine story – was initially inspired by a Twilight Zone episode.

Science fiction continues to play a role in the band’s latest album Mechanize (reviewed here), which describes a world where humans are so reliant on technology that they’ve formed a symbiotic relationship with machines. Bell recently took a few minutes in his tour bus to discuss his love for science fiction, growing up as a Star Trek fan, liberating action figures from their boxes, and pivotal science fiction movies.

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How did you get into science fiction as a kid?

How could you not, really? It’s fascinating, the concept of space travel, lasers, teleportation.  My father was a Trekkie, and because of him I watched the original Star Trek. Because of that, I would watch space movies and be fascinated. I remember the first science fiction book I tried to read was Robert Heinlein, one of his books.

Was it Stranger In A Strange Land?

Maybe, I can’t remember. I was reading it in fourth grade. But I loved the concepts of different times and places and how writers could really take science they knew and move it forward.

Did your fixation with science fiction predate your involvement with music?

Oh yeah, this was like in elementary school.  I was singing in church and school choirs, but that wasn’t my music. We were doing melodies from Grease.

Do you remember the first time you saw Star Trek?  What did you think?

I liked the ship.  The Enterprise was really cool. I liked the humanoids they interact with from other worlds.  And the stories were just incredible.  I only had a grasp of what was going on, but it made me think a lot.

Fear Factory talks about the pitfalls of modernity and industrial culture. But your band is reliant on technology to make your music. Have you considered that paradox?

It makes me think about George Orwell and 1984. His story is about a world based on martial law. That’s what the machine is. From my perspective, the machine is more the establishment and the government and the world we live in than a physical machine.

There’s some aspects of the machine in The Terminator, Blade Runner, and RoboCop that I enjoyed. A big aspect of The Terminator was the idea of the machines taking over.  It was a physical machine, but there was also the concept of machines taking over as a full-on political entity.  The more we advance with technology and rely on technology to take care of us, there is that concern.

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Click here to view the embedded video.

The Terminator original trailer

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People let technology take over their lives because it’s fun or neat.  Now it’s ubiquitous.

It’s an addiction. Everything is so easy. I didn’t need a cell phone 15 years ago, but now I can’t live without it. It’s a necessity, more than a Swiss Army knife.  Is what this technology offering us really helpful? Is the fact that you can call or text anyone at any moment really helpful in the scheme of things? It offers a false sense of security.

For every science fiction story, you need an antagonist. It’s often a machine.  It used to be Martians, but now [the antagonist] is often something man-made, and that’s even more frightening.

What are five science fiction movies you think are absolutely essential?

Blade Runner, that’s the top one. David Lynch’s Dune. THX 1138 offered an interesting vision of the future. I love Alien. And the first Star Wars movie, the original .

Do you collect Star Trek memorabilia?

I used to collect Star Trek and Star Wars stuff,  figurines, and ships. I stopped doing it after a while because I realized it was just fool’s gold. I was tired of wasting all the space in my place with cardboard and plastic. I wanted to touch the figurines and play with them. I’m a physical guy, I just can’t just look at them. So I took all of them out of their packages.  I kept all of the stuff, I just don’t have it all on display anymore. I got to a point in my life where I didn’t need to buy it. I became a little too practical.

Star Trek or Star Wars?

Star Trek. Each story is plausible and believable. There is real science, real concepts, and real philosophy. Gene Roddenberry was a genius.

Next Generation or the original?

I loved both of them. But Roddenberry perfected Star Trek in The Next Generation. Star Trek was great in the original three years it ran. The Next Generation found a niche after the second season as the characters evolved.

Has it been interesting to witness these technological changes from the beginning of your career until now?

It’s amazing.  The recording technology has definitely advanced, and that’s a cool aspect. The uncool aspect has been the Internet with downloading and pirating. It’s destroyed the industry. The industry killed itself.

All of Fear Factory’s album covers have an industrial, stark look that seems influenced by science fiction. Is that something you planned from the band’s inception?

It’s something Dino (Cazares) and I have always strived for in concepts, sounds, and vision.  Fear Factory is this entity with a philosophy, and we wanted the covers to convey that.

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After Glorior Belli’s baffling new excursion, here’s another potentially intriguing/disastrous/awesome departure from black metal.

Earlier this year, I interviewed Sanford Parker. He mentioned some records he had produced:

The new Twilight record is highly influenced by the whole industrial scene. The new Nachtmystium is pretty much off the chart as far as that goes. All these records I mentioned, you can definitely hear that strong Wax Trax presence in them.

We didn’t like Nachtmystium’s last album, Assassins: Black Meddle Pt. I, because it weakly straddled the line between black metal and “psychedelic music”.

But if the above taste of their new album, Addicts: Black Meddle Pt. II, out June 8 on Century Media, is any indication, Nachtmystium have at least resolved the straddling problem.  It has zero black metal, but has acoustic guitar, clean singing, and an overall vibe that suggests post-metal (German group Long Distance Calling comes to mind) crossed with industrial music (Killing Joke comes to mind).

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Perhaps appropriately, it introduces a new, deathcore-ish logo that drops the pentagram and inverted crosses of the previous Nachtmystium logo (see above).

I’m kind of digging all these potential Cold Lakes. They help keep things lively.

Despite everything — a now-dated industrial metal style, endless tabloid drama regarding lineups, and a sub-.500 career batting average — Fear Factory are still relevant. One reason why lies in the intro to the video (see below) for “Fear Campaign,” from their new album Mechanize (Candlelight, 2010).

It was not necessary to camouflage the insanity of the world of today within a science fiction setting. The world today has become the world that writers predicted long ago.

Unlike the futuristic imagery for which the band is known, the video portrays real world ills: guns, drugs, money. The band’s future has become its present. Singer Burton C. Bell’s aging is visual proof. But if the world has become mechanized, Fear Factory offer no solutions. They offer soundbites in the form of lyrics and riffs. Like much of metal, they are descriptive, not prescriptive.

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Click here to view the embedded video.

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But in this case, description is sufficient. The Latin phrase res ipsa loquitur (the thing speaks for itself) comes to mind. Still images are visual soundbites, and here they speak for themselves.

Above are recent depictions of cyborgs in pop culture: Fear Factory and Hypocrisy on the covers of Decibel and Terrorizer, respectively, and posters for Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, a TV series starring Summer Glau, and Surrogates, a film starring Bruce Willis. The man/machine topic is still a hot one. See, for example, a new device that literally prints out, inkjet-style, human tissue and organs, and Roxxxy, the world’s first sex robot.

Another reason why Fear Factory are still relevant is that their sound is no longer futuristic. The ultra-tight, mechanical sound they pioneered on Demanufacture is now standard for mainstream metal. Yes, Fear Factory are to blame for today’s glut of click-tracked, triggered productions.

But what so much of that stuff forgets, and what Fear Factory did best, is the soul in the machine. Bell’s voice and Dino Cazares’ riffs are immediately recognizable. Mechanize plays up these strengths and recaptures the vigor of Demanufacture. It won’t win change any opinions — there is a vigorous backlash against this sound — but now the potential fan base is much larger, due to a new generation of fans raised on the high-gloss metal Fear Factory spawned. As with most metal, the source is more potent than the tributaries.

Recently I was listening to Godflesh’s Pure/Cold World/Slavestate 3-disc reissue that Earache put out, and I couldn’t help thinking that the music was fantastic but also quite dated. In referencing the techno and hip-hop of the day, Justin Broadrick was pushing boundaries. But contemporary sounds inevitably become obsolete.

Streetcleaner, which turns 20 today according to Wikipedia, suffers no such fate. It is “industrial metal” in that it employs a drum machine and descends from Swans. But otherwise it is sui generis. Broadrick programs the percussion almost without reference to humanity. There are kicks and snares, but no human would play them so cruelly and single-mindedly. The drum machine transcends being a musical instrument and becomes a pure weapon.

Like Rats

Purity makes Streetcleaner timeless. It does not need genre to operate. It is a howl of humanity in the face of its inhumanity, whether by machines or its own misdeeds: “You breed! Like rauuuts!” Aptly, the cover image comes from Altered States, whose tagline was “When he heard his cry for help, it wasn’t human.” If Black Sabbath fired the first guitar-based salvo against the industrialized world, fellow Brummies Godflesh completed the task 20 years later.

All those cyborg movies of the ’80s — Blade Runner, Terminator, Robocop, Evil Dead — Streetcleaner stripped them down to pure dread. Broadrick created a mechanized monster much larger than himself. No wonder he felt discomfort inhabiting it and eventually abandoned its shell. However, this tweet by Earache label head Digby Pearson has caused much speculation. Iron Man lives again, perhaps?

Buy:
Amazon (LP)
Amazon (CD)
Amazon (MP3)
Earache US (CD, LP)
Earache EU (CD, LP)

With few exceptions, Connecticut’s metal scene lacks talent and cohesive support. People come out for Ozzfest and Emmure, but not much else. Thankfully, a variety of international bands temporarily buried that fact at Hartford’s Webster Underground last Friday.

I arrived too late to see Rose Funeral, but their cookie-cutter deathcore holds no appeal for me anyway. Up next were Augury, one of Montreal’s countless death metal bands. Unlike many of their tech-metal peers, they can structure a song and pull it off live. They sounded better on stage than on disc, where they have too much of that Nuclear Blast sheen of compression.

Australian exports The Amenta are a hard band to figure out, as they’re still trying to find an identity, I think. They took the stage in black corpsepaint and had great presence. Their frontman definitely went to Black Metal Singer Academy. But their music, a weak mash of The Berzerker, Aborted, and Behemoth, lacked cohesion. Crowd response was at a low point here. If The Amenta chose a solid musical direction, they could be much better.

Warbringer

Thank the metal gods for Warbringer. This was the fourth time this year I’ve seen them, and they never disappoint. When the thrash revival inevitably declines, these SoCal kids will still be doing the toxic waltz. Out of a crowd of about fifty, frontman John Kevill whipped up at least thirty-five into a circle pit during “Combat Shock.” Sure, only diehards could tell the songs apart, but did that matter when the breakdown in “Dread Command” hit? Not to the circle-bangers that lined the stage for the entire set.

Warbringer – Combat Shock

Decrepit Birth upped the ante with their last album, Diminishing Between Worlds. Its technicality was love/hate material, but it also contained melody and atmosphere. Their lead singer was much more entertaining to watch than death metal’s typical singer-guitarist. Instead of having to concentrate on playing an instrument, vocalist (and Chris Barnes doppelgänger) Bill Robinson owned the stage with a unique delivery and dominating presence.

Vader – Black to the Blind

Vader weren’t extraordinary live. Stage banter was nonexistent, some sound issues were never resolved, and this particular lineup doesn’t have much chemistry yet. Yet the intensity of the songs more than made up for these things. Vocalist/guitarist Piotr “Peter” Wiwczarek has been doing this almost as long as I’ve been alive, and he’s perfected his brand of death metal. The entire room became a pit during “ShadowFear” and “Black to the Blind.” We were detached from everything external and focused on nothing but the music. For me, that made made the show truly exceptional.

This US/Canada tour continues until mid-December.
See dates here.

When Fear Factory announced that guitarist Dino Cazares and singer Burton C. Bell had reunited alongside bassist Byron Stroud and drummer Gene Hoglan, the interwebs went apeshit. If Black Sabbath are the gold standard of intra-band drama, Fear Factory are C-list tabloid fodder. Personally, I am curious as to what this lineup will produce. Fear Factory’s reputation has long been in the gutter, and Cazares and co. know this is probably the band’s last gasp. In honor of this reunion, and also the new, not-that-good Terminator flick, here’s “H-K (Hunter-Killer)” from 1995’s Demanufacture.

H-K (Hunter-Killer)

What really excites me, though, is the sheer heaviness of this lineup. I once put together a fantasy all-star band that would be the heaviest band on earth. It would have Dino Cazares and Karl Sanders on guitars, Vrangsinn of Carpathian Forest on bass, Gene Hoglan on drums, and either Robert Smith or B.B. King on vocals. (Hoglan is famous for his size, but people don’t realize how goddamn tall he is, too. When he walks into a room, it gets darker. He blocks that much light. It is amazing to behold.) Vrangsinn would never play with such a lineup, though. Stroud, a strapping young lad, would be a perfect replacement. Thus, Fear Factory are 3/5 of the way to being the heaviest band on earth. One wag on Blabbermouth remarked that on the band’s upcoming tour, the Europeans would have to reinforce their stages. Let’s hope Fear Factory get tour support, as they might have to pay baggage fees just to get on the plane.

Someday someone will clear massive legal hurdles and issue a box set of Justin Broadrick’s remixes. (You can see a list of them here.) Until then, one will have to collect them individually. Has anyone heard the Godflesh remix from 1994 of the Lemonheads??? (Here is an interview from then that asks Broadrick, among other things, if he is a fan of the Internet.)

Fucking Hostile (Biomechanical Mix)
By Demons Be Driven (Biomechanical Mix)

Equally strange is the fact that Broadrick did two remixes for Pantera under the Biomechanical alias he used in the ’90s. They’re quite bad. If you didn’t like Pantera before them, you’d like them even less afterwards. At the time, Broadrick’s remix methodology seemed to be to “move stuff around.” Only in the ’00s would he delve into the deep editing and extra production that made his remixes sometimes more interesting than his own work. (His take on Pelican’s “Angel Tears” is one of the best rock remixes ever made.) Metal remixes were more miss than hit, but they were some of the cutest relics of the ’90s.

I feel the same way about Justin Broadrick as I do about Metallica: their later work doesn’t move me, but I cherish their earlier output. Earache is reissuing Godflesh’s Songs of Love and Hate (1996), Love and Hate in Dub (1997), and In All Languages DVD (2001) in a low-priced box set. It’s an interesting decision. Songs of Love and Hate (and every record after Selfless, really) is more footnote than pillar in Godflesh’s legacy. It was the band’s first record with a live drummer, Bryan “Brain” Mantia (who later joined Primus, and who played with Buckethead in Praxis and Guns N’ Roses). Conversely, it was also Godflesh’s first extensive foray into breakbeats.

Gang Starr – Speak Ya Clout
Godflesh – Circle of Shit

The results were literally mixed. Tracks often found Mantia playing alongside loops in uneasy union. The record suffered from a lack of focus. Broadrick sometimes seemed more interested in flexing production chops than writing songs. Still, highlights were many. “Sterile Prophet,” one of Godflesh’s few uptempo songs, was insistent and dirty. On the remix package Love and Hate in Dub, Broadrick reshaped it into a stripped-down “Version” and a half-speed “Dub” that was a primitive precursor to dubstep. “Circle of Shit” sampled “Speak Ya Clout,” the sequel to “I’m the Man,” the Gang Starr posse cut that introduced Jeru the Damaja to the world. Love and Hate in Dub was even more scattershot than its parent. However, its grimy, dystopian breakbeats helped spawn offspring like Dälek and El-P. Even at his worst, Broadrick was influential.

Sterile Prophet
Sterile Prophet (In Dub)

Buy:
Earache (US)
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