Interviews

Interviews: Fear Factory

This interview was conducted by J-Sin Shawn and his friend James Little who is a huge Fear Factory fan by the way. Unfortunately, we weren't able to see the show in DC with Fear Factory, (hed) pe, System of a Down, and Spineshank due to unforeseen difficulties but it was great to do the interview. Christian is the bass player in Fear Factory and answered all our questions. Check out Fear Factory.



Smother - Let's start off by asking what kind of musical influences you guys have.

Christian – Definitely U2, for all four of us. And Faith No More, Ministry, Pantera, Rage, bands like that.

Smother – So what's your current rig that you're playing.

Christian – Mesaboogie, Fender and Empeg.

Smother – What are your favorite songs off of "Obsolete"?

Christian – "Shock", "Edgecrusher", and "Resurrection".

Smother – Are you guys pumped about headlining the second stage at Ozzfest this year? Is it your ideal tour or what?

Christian – Yeah, we're real psyched for it. This year it's going to be even bigger with even better bands. It'll help out bands like us out a lot. I mean Slayer's already been there but it helps bands out a lot like us, you know some of the smaller bands. It will kill Lollapalooza again this year. They didn't even have one last year did they? We love Ozzfest. But our ideal tour would have to be with Pantera.

Smother – So I heard you're going to be making a video for your cover of Gary Numan's "Cars". When is this gonna take place?

Christian – At the beginning of May probably. It'll be a lot like The Matrix kind of stuff. Loads of eye-candy.

Smother – Yeah, I've heard that that video should be getting a lot of air-play on MTV and great radio coverage as well. Are you excited about this?

Christian – Yeah playing in Cancun definitely helped us get our foot in the door. We've probably increased our fanbase by at least 50% already.

Smother – So what do you think of MTV and there lack of good bands?

Christian – Well there's a lot of good bands that get some limited coverage. But I think that bands like us could change MTV around and make it better. I think we'll surprise a lot of metal heads who are just flipping through the channels, they'll come across us or a Monster Magnet video and be surprised. It's really up to the new generation of metal bands because there's a lot of program directors that simply won't play metal because they're afraid no one wants to listen. But I think we've definitely left a good taste with MTV.

Smother – I know that Obsolete is kind of a concept album, will there ever be a mini-movie as part of the album?

Christian – I don't know. Unfortunately it costs a lot of money to do things like that. However, we are going to do an Edgecrusher animated music comic strip thing. You'll see it eventually.

Smother – Will you be doing any remixes or any albums any time soon?

Christian – No remixes. We're going to be doing a bunch of video games like Mesa which is similar to Tombraider but with more special effects. That's gonna be big. We're also going to do stuff for KickFlip, NFL Extreme, and Death Demolition Racer. It'll definitely be our thing. Maybe one day we'll develop a Fear Factory video game.

Smother – Have you guys ever had any videos before and did they get any play at all?

Christian – We had "Replica" but Roadrunner doesn't have a lot of pull over at MTV. Roadrunner is no Warner Bros. People at Warner Bros can just send MTV videos and MTV will accept what they send and usually play it. It's real hard for a Roadrunner band to get videos played but maybe Ozzfest will help change that.

Smother – Did you guys come together from separate bands?

Christian – Yeah, Raymond's old guitar player and Dino had problems and Burton was living with Dino at the time. So then Fear Factory was just a 3 piece. Then I got in the band after many live bassists. On the last tour with Sepultura, our keyboard player was used to be live and then he joined up as well.

Smother – How do you guys come up with your samples?

Christian – Even I can come up with samples but Reese translates them and finds a lot of our samples. Most of the samples are what they are because of Reese's work.

Smother – I heard that Dino was going to be in Backstage Sluts 2 and then I got the movie and he was no where to be found.

Christian – I don't know anything about that. I mean I know about the movie but I'm not for porn myself. There aren't any porn chicks in my life. I'm not like that.

Smother – So what's life on the road? Is it tough for those of you that have girlfriends or wives?

Christian – It isn't as laid back as people make it out to be. I personally love it but it can get really stressful. Basically it whatever your personal lifestyle is. I would say it's a lot easier if you're married. I personally like being stable.

Smother – So what kind of light show are you guys going to have tonight?

Christian – We'll have some lights and techno stuff before the show. Not too much of course but a bit of eye candy. We can't do everything we'd like to do because of expenses.

Smother – How long have you guys been on the road? It seems like forever. Are you going back into the studio anytime soon?

Christian – Well we've been touring since last August pretty much straight. The only stuff we'll be releasing in the near future is our video and our video game stuff.

After the interview we hung out on the bus for a while and listened to some obscure DJ's remix CD while watching 'Happy Gilmore'. Thanks to the guys at Roadrunner and to Fear Factory for being so great.