Review Summary: Though he may never admit it, Dino owes a debt to this album.
As every fan of industrial metal knows, Fear Factory are considered highly influential within this genre. The release of
Demanufacture firmly established the use of softer elements, such as clean vocals, within the coarse noise of industrial and indeed all forms of metal. A key composer of
Demanufacture's musical skeleton, Dino Cazares is highly regarded as the definitive guitarist for the band. Hence when the band reformed in 2009 with Cazares, Fear Factory was hailed as being saved from the clouds of mediocrity that supposedly surrounded
Transgression and
Archetype. However to ignore this album because Cazares is missing is a mistake as it is easily one of Fear Factory's most consistent releases.
The consistency stems from a journey that the band has been taking since
Obselete; to create the perfect balance between the harder and softer components within their sound. Resurrection established a polarity within the songs. It drew a line between the dissonance of the growls and jagged riffs with the assonance of the soaring clean vocals (a convention established with "Resurrection" and "Timelessness") and the more melodic riffs. The next album,
Digimortal made some distance towards finding the balance but by this time Fear Factory was moving away from its signature sound. It was only when Fear Factory reformed and regressed back to its roots that a balance was found within their fifth.
Archetype found the balance within a pastiche of past releases. Evidence of "Pisschrist-esque" song structure can be seen within "Default Judgement." Burton's clean vocals are reminiscent of Resurrection and the ghost of Cazares still lingers on within Christian's riffs. These selections are careful though. The band knew which ingredients to add into the melting pot and have produced some superb results. "Archetype" and "Slave Labour" are both high points of this album's spectrum. They meld rough and clean, melody and dissonance into song structures that flow in their haunting manner yet retain that mechanical edge.
Nearly all of the other songs follow this structure. However, they fail to live up to the success of the aforementioned two. While these songs do have their highs, they suffer from a level of immaturity and awkwardness. The transition between melody and industrial grinding is sometimes too sharp, the contrast is made too apparent. The songs also suffer from a repetitiveness that, while not too much of a hindrance, does point to a level of reluctance to move beyond the established template.
It shows a level of inexperience with this formula and this crops up further within the juxtaposition of songs such as "Bonescraper" and "Human Shields." The interchange from soft to hard is disjointed and the energy generated by "Bonescraper" is lost within the acoustics of "Human Shields." The two songs here still suffer from the stigma of Fear Factory's inconsistency and indeed it permeats the entire album, the abominable cover of "School" not helping this problem. It is not as great as it was in previous albums but it highlights the staling nature of some of the elements such as Christian's cloned guitar riffs and highlights the lack of Cazares.
The lack of Dino is not detrimental but the shadow of the missing band member can be seen. Burton's vocal cues, unlike in previous albums, are more haphazard. They are not precise as they were before. The riffs of Christian start to feel recycled and tired in places as well. However the greatest detritment comes from the lack of weight that Dino's riffs (and ego) bring to the songs. While the heaviness is there, Cazares' downtuned riffs within
MechanizE provide a greater weight to the songs than Christian can ever create. The lack of weight makes the songs in places a little too streamlined, leaving Burton's vocals hollow without the lead weight of the guitars behind them.
However as stated Dino does owe this album a debt. It's balance of melody and jaggedness incorporated into the original Fear Factory sound is a progressive bridge towards the sound achieved on
Mechanize. Its influence helped form the foundations of that album. However it was, like this one, not a perfect album. It shows Fear Factory are still treading this path. this album was a crucial step in pushing them to the denoument of their goal and towards another magnum opus. One that maybe as influential as
Demanufacture...
