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Interview with Burton
Interview: The new album is called: Digimortal. When you look at the lyrics it seems to be a different kind of view as usual. Yeah you're right. It is a different view from our other past. Fear Factory is involved in a lot of ways. Individualty, Musicly and conceptly. At first we had the birth of Fear Factory with The Soul Of A New Machine. And then there was the grow of Fear Factory with Demanufacture and Obsolete. The concepts where like a doubt between man versus machine. You almost can see it like a fight between those two. On the new album the evolution has gone so far that man and machine are involved together. Humanity and technology are the two mature elements of our world so they had to involved together. So in the future it is man and machine in a symbiotic relationship and without humanity or without technology, they both fail. In a couple songs you talk about clones. That is also a big part of the future. What do you think for yourself about the cloning issue? I think it's very onnatural. "They" say it will be great for medical purposes. It's just a first step towards another evolution of science. Do you think it's going to happen? Oh yeah, it's going to happen. In any future you can dream of it's very very posible. I think cloning technology is going to be an issue. One, it's an ethical issue. Two, it become an issue of what kind of rights do these clones have? Have they human rights? The song "Invisible Wounds" is about the way we maybe see a clone. You can download everything in a body but it never gets a soul. Exactly. On this album we present questions instead of looking what going to happen. The question we present are to provoke thought. Intellectuel thought, try to get you think in a different perspectives. The first song "What Will Become" is a question right there. What will become when the key for immorality is unlocked? What happens to destiny? What happens to fear? What happens to the naturals laws like the survival of the fitest? It is an interesting question to pose. I mean everybody has the question; what the meaning of life? And also a question is do I have a soul? Or what is the soul? These are questions that everybody things about. Is it real and is it changeable. Can you download it? I think this album is easier to understand then the past records, because it has questions that we all have. I've read somewhere that you use your vocals a bit different. Can you tell me more about that? As a vocalist i'm getting better. When I started with Fear Factory I was "singing" but I'll get better every record. I'm still learning more and I can extend my range further. When we set down to write this record, one word we came up with that we wanted to achieve was simplicity. We looked at all of our past records and looked...okay what are the best parts of Fear Factory. Take the best songs. Good records song but also good live songs. Then we looked what are the bad parts in these songs. Then we simplefy a lot. Because we simplefy the song a lot more it gave room for the more electronic/industrial site of Fear Factory. So Rhyss was able to put more of his sound into the record. Not in an upfront way sound but more subtle sounds. That you get the feeling; what was that? That's all that was necessary. You mentioned your producer Rhys. I heard you also tried other producers. Why back to Rhys? To use Rhys was always the first thought. Not only as a producer but also as our programmer and keyboardplayer. We wanted him to be part of the Fear Factory proces. But last year we went through some changes. We got a new management. This manament is used to work in certain ways. They work a lot with big names. They are used to work in a formula. So they propose the idea of working with a big name producer. So giving them the benifit of the doubt, going in with an open mind, we said okay lets talk to them. It won't hurt to talk to someone. So we spook to Bob Rock for example. We did a demo especialy for Bob Rock and send it to him. It was a really good demo with 6 songs. Two weeks later we got word from Bob Rock and he said that it's to heavy. So then you stop looking. I mean Rhys knows the band, he knows what sound what we want. When you have an other producer, they bring in the sound they want. I'm glad our management has enough faith in us to let us do that, because we got a killer record out of it. It's a very futureristic sounding record. Who makes the concept for a records like this? It's a band proces when comes to titles and ideas. But when it comes to organising all the words and all the thoughs together, thats me. I come in and gather all the other and I come up with this (a bio where all the songs are explaned). Yeah it's me thinking all the time. I also read a lot, I watch a lot of programs and a learn from it. I watch a lot of movies and documentary. I like to learn. I've read a book for this abum that is called; The age of the spiritual machine. It discripes the advandced technology towards artificial intelligence and how fast it will come to us. The auther thinks that in 2020 there will be a machine that thinks for hisself. But I also read a lot of comic books. I even get great ideas by watching cartoons. Is Fear Factory your fulltime job or do you have an other job when you are not on stage? This is my job now. We started writing this record in januari 2000 and we have been in the studio the hole year writing and preproducing it. We go 5 days a week, 6 hours in the studio and we did this till januari 2001. Then we finished the album. We didn't make any money with it so luckaly I saved some so I couls survive that year. The last job I had was in 1995. I worked in a movietheater selling tickets. I love movies. I could see movies for free so that was great. What was the last movie you saw? I think it was shadow of the vampire with John Malkovich. The movie was bad. John Malkovich is so irritating. He playes the same character all the time. In the movie 'Being John Malkovich' he was great, because then he could play himself. When you see others play, that they are John Malkovich, then it's great. I also have seen a movie called 'Pi'. That one was really cool. It's trying to find the meaning of life through numbers. So they try to find the name of God by 'Pi'. The other Fear Factory members are also very busy with side-projects. Don't you have the feeling to do something likewise? Oh yeah I do. But it's not necessary towards music. What I like to do is to write a novel or the Fear Factory movie. At this moment I'm writing a screenplay. It's a real movie not a tour movie or something. It's a movie with a story and a plot about the future. Maybe I will sell it to somebody who will put it out. You never know. Musically I don't have found anybody who I want to do something new with. When I do something in music it will be totally different then Fear Factory. I wonder if any of the Fear Factory fans even like it. Have you got any plans for a tour or festivals these year? The only festival we have planned is 21 april in France. We start touring on march 17. It's about 25 shows through Europe. You can see this tour like a trailer for a movie. We just have shorts shows to introduce the new song to the audience. When the records comes out we problabe will do some festivals in juli and august. I think It would be a great idea to do the festivals. I believe 21 of march we play in Utrecht. Can you believe it? Just one show in Holland. In 1995 we toured with Brutal Thruth and we did 10 shows in Holland! It would be great to that again. What do you think is more amusing; playing on your own tour or on festivals? It's all good to do. With the touring get to play in very intimate places. You can touch the audience and your sound is a lot better than on festivals. But on festivals there is no other vibe, when you come of the stage there are a lot of peaple. It doesn't matter if you sound like shit or not, it's still fun. It's a big experience when you are on stage and more than 10.000 people are watching. It's just great. Is there a big difference between the European or the American audience? Maybe the only difference is that European audience except heavy music faster. Well and maybe the European audience get a little bit more crasy. When I spoke to Karl from Nile, he was very surprised that here was a mixed audience. Hardcore kids and metalheads come very often to the same shows. In America that's out of the question. Yeah that's true. That is what I meant with the European audience excepts heavy music more. I think in America they have a smaller scope on things. In America the hardcorescene is very narrowminded. They don't listen to anything else. They talk about individuality and about conformity, but they all look alike. I don't know why is that either. Music is created to make you feel a certain emotion or make you think in a way. Like a story kind of tool. Well thank you for this moment and enjoy your stay here in Holland. You're welcome. Tonight I will leave to Germany so I won't be long here.
Interviewer: henk |