Review Summary: Screaming slug doesn’t go faster for all that.
Let’s face it,
The Industrialist was a let-down. Hoglan was dismissed, the drums are programmed, the album is short and ends with its weaker tracks. However, it cannot be said that it is an irrelevant trip. Riffs are heavy as hell, Burton’s performance is as angry as it gets. It is a flawed Fear Factory album but surely, it’s not another “Digimortal” or “Transgression.” But, let’s face it again. With all its quality and respectability,
The Industrialist is dull.
It has taken me three years to truly be able to put my finger on what was wrong with that album because there is so much good in it. All this time, I was expecting it to
click at some point and then become the very good listen I was convinced it could be. But this never happened.
Now that
Genexus was announced, I had to face reality : I haven’t listened to
The Industrialist that much since its release and still, when I did, it was with the hope that it was going to grow on me.
The album mainly suffers from something I would call the “Powershifter” effect. When the single of “Mechanize” was revealed most of us were impressed by its heaviness and reassured as for the future of the band. But if after one minute the song becomes quite enjoyable, its long and dull introduction is close to unlistenable. What was there presented as Fear Factory’s trademark style, extremely jerky palm-muted bland guitar riffs supported by double-bass, was in fact something totally new and not that good.
Indeed, if one thing, “Obsolete” and “Demanufacture” are striking for how the different parts of the songs flow into each other nicely without the smallest bump. On
The Industrialist, Dino seems determined to kill off any sense of pace with either a sluggish overgradual evolution or structurally irrevelent instrumental pauses composed of bland palm-muted riffs accompanied by some generic impersonal double-bass; both elements preventing the listener from experiencing any feeling of surprise or wonder because any change in the direction taken by a song is either too little or too over-announced. To this, Burton adds some rare but consequences heavy over-repeated average vocals, and the album is done for.
At first, I thought the lyrics were too unoriginal or the programmed drums bothered me, but truly it’s the sluggishness of the songs that ruins it for me, that strong desire I have to shout “MOVE FORWARD” whenever I listen to one of them.
Occurrences of these spoilers elements are very easy to point at and precisely with that.
There’s virtually no variation of note in the main riff of the title track and the fact that it’s introduced by salvos of double bass doesn’t help making it more appetizing. It is rhythmically satisfying and works well as a verse riff but when Burton’s voice kicks in, the harm has already been done. At 3m53s in, we are treated with a repetition of this introduction through isolated double-bass drums which simply gives the feeling that the song has stopped and is restarting. Not good.
But "The Industrialist" is certainly one of the songs that were spared the most. “Recharger” is, on the contrary, a complete slaughter. Who thought that this oversimplistic “opening” riff needed to be heard four times without snare drums before being heard four times AGAIN this time with full double-bass and snare drums ? Again, when Burton’s voice kicks in and the riffs STAYS, it’s hard not to run out of patience. When the song takes off (at 0m57s), boredom has already set in. But the pre-chorus and chorus are so agreeable, you can’t help but think there might be hope, unfortunately, as soon as they are over, the song goes into an instrumental part with an overly emphatic atrociously jolting riff which is repeated several times and annihilates any sense of flow so efficiently that it is as if it was done on purpose. As if Dino thought
this was the heart of Fear Factory's songwriting.
Ironically, this transforms into a very nice industrial passage which ends with an even nicer heavy climax ("All of this must end" sings Burton) only to come back to the dull opening riff AGAIN presented without snare drums or vocals which AGAIN makes the song go to a nearly full stop. This happens in “Depraved Mind Murder” and “Difference Engine” as well where nice climactic parts are seemingly purposely ruined by a clumsy reorientation to a previous riff supported by a drumming that conveys a feeling of stagnation.
“New Messiah” opens with an incredibly efficient heavy riff which reminds of “Smasher/devourer” or “Securitron” off
Obsolete but better, only to be neutered by some out-of-place ambient guitar solo which leads it clumsily into the first verse. The worst part being that the disturbing guitar line comes back before the second verse and totally breaks the pace. It is not a bad element, in fact, it brings some atmosphere, but its presence is so artificial and clumsy structure-wise that it is completely disorienting. Plus, it feels like it trims the previous great riff of another appearance and conveys an impression of lack of balance between the two. The riff that supports "Future Begins Now" brings identity to the song and should have been repeated more whereas the awkward one should have been given less room.
As for “Disassemble” and “Depraved Mind Murder,” these tracks are examples of some average vocals transforming the listen into a task. Remove two or three occurrences of these “I have been scraped by humanity, Darkness confines every injury” and “Falling down, breaking down” and the songs recover a sense of dynamism.
And that is what
The Industrialist lacks : dynamism. During most of its duration the album seems to roll out in front of you at a sluggish pace which prevents its beautiful motives to connect with each other and have an impact on the listener other than the intellectual observation that it’s not bad. Exactly like when someone talks to you too slowly and you become incapable of being attentive without forcing your focus, which is very disagreeable. Your granddad could be telling you an incredibly exciting theory; it is physically hard to listen to him. Amusingly, the only song that endures this treatment well enough is "God Eater" as it emphasizes its volontary hypnotic feel.
At the end of the day, there are a lot of audio softwares around and the sound of this album is so computerized that annoying parts of these songs can easily be removed and remote ones easily glued together without anything being noticeable. Have fun.
