DINO CAZARES Says FEAR FACTORY 'Got Really Lucky' With 'Genexus' Album

Brian Giffin of Australia’s Loud magazine recently conducted an interview with FEAR FACTORY guitarist Dino Cazares. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

Loud: You must have been pleased with the critical response to [FEAR FACTORY‘s latest album] “Genexus”. A lot of reviews suggested it was probably your best album since “Obsolete”.

Dino: I’m definitely happy with the response. It’s been getting great reviews pretty much worldwide. We got really lucky with this album — people seem to really like it! We really took our time crafting the album, we really focused on it. We wanted to make sure we paid attention to each song. Previous albums over the years, sometimes you get rushed. You’re in between tour cycles, the record company wants you to hurry up and put a record out and you lose focus sometimes or you don’t get to pay enough attention to the songs as you would if you just take your time. This time we were able to let the songs marinate and grow, and once we did all that, that’s what helped to make the record as good as it was.

Loud: A lot of people seemed to get upset that you used electronic drums on “The Industrialist”, despite the fact that you had always done a lot of electronic tracking. Were you surprised that people got upset you were using electronics on a FEAR FACTORY record?

Dino: Yes, I was very surprised by that, because, conceptually, our albums have been about technology. How technology evolves and how it plays a part in our everyday lives. In music in particular, people have been using drum machines and drum programs and computer technology to create music for years. For years and years! It’s just becoming more popular. The new-school metal kids are more familiar with it, the older-school metal fans are not. Because they didn’t grow up with it. Now all the new school kids are creating music on their laptops and their iPhones. You can program your fucking iPhone to make some hip-hop with some Autotuning on it. Everybody’s a musician these days when it comes to the laptop. It’s just what our music has evolved to, and I was surprised that people had a hard time adapting to that. Me and Burt [C. Bell, vocals] decided to be honest and let people know how we created the record, because it’s important. We just got a big backlash! The thing is that most people wouldn’t even know [the drums were fully programmed] if I didn’t say that.

Loud: Since it had always been a big part of your music, I found it very strange that people reacted so vehemently to it on “The Industrialist”. You’ve gone back to traditional drumming on “Genexus”, but as you’ve said, you can’t really tell and you’re a band that’s always embraced that technology.

Dino: Completely. And even though we used live drumming, doesn’t mean we didn’t edit the drums and use computers here and there to make it sound better than what a human can actually do. I like to call it a hybrid. When we first wrote the album, I wrote it in one of my bedrooms converted into a strudio. I wrote it on a drum program, and then when I worked out what the music was going to be, I gave all the drum programming that I did to our drummer. He physically learned it all and then recorded it live. He was simulating the machine.

Read the entire interview at Loud magazine.