Dallas, TX.

Ah, my home state.

No shit?

Yeah, I was born and raised in Houston.

I saw you guys a while back. I want to say it was at the Gypsy Ballroom and Children Of Bodom was one of your opening acts.

Yeah, that was the tour we did with them.

Yeah, that was a cool show.

Didn’t we have Lamb Of God on that one too?

Yeah, I think so.

That was a while ago.

Yeah, it sure as hell was. Of course the Gypsy Ballroom no longer exists. I think it had something to do with the rent being too exorbitant or some shit like that.

I don’t even remember where it is.

Main Street in downtown Dallas. You guys basically formed in 1989 and pioneered a brand new sound that some people dug and some people didn’t. Now there are quite a few modern bands who credit you guys with being a big influence.

Go figure. That’s cool. I don’t usually think about stuff like that. When I do think about it, when people mention it to me, I feel a good feeling. I feel that as an artist myself I inspire young talent to create their own art. To me that’s a positive thing in itself. So I did something good for the world.

Yeah, when you think about it, when you were younger there were bands out there who influenced you. You were fortunate enough in that you get to turn around and do the same thing yourself.

Absolutely. There are bands that influenced me that made me want to be become a musician and artist as well.

You guys have been around for about 20 years even though I guess you guys disbanded for a while due to internal combustion.

That’s a way of putting that. We’ve had our ups and downs, that’s for sure.

Being around for about 20 years, that’s a pretty good time period. A lot of bands don’t really make it that long.

We’ve been around for like 20 years and it’s been a good ride. Like I said, ups and downs. In this day and age it’s hard to have longevity. I feel fortunate that we’re still here.

The music industry has really changed a lot over the years. It first started out with doing one or two singles and that’s it. Then it turned into putting out four or five albums. Now it’s turned into doing a couple of songs for iTunes.

I know, it’s ridiculous but that’s the way of the world. The industry is changing. The art of actually writing a whole record is something that’s almost lost. A cohesive album where it’s not just one song. The whole album represents a whole piece of art. To me, that doesn’t happen very often at all anymore. There are a few records that basically accomplish it. Even less records these days but there are bands that are doing it occasionally. It still happens but not as often as it used to.

I come from the old school because I actually remember eight track tapes.

So do I. I’ll be 41 this month.

I’ll be 43 in August.

Congratulations. I remember my brother and I had an eight track tape player.

It’s kind of funny because I think the only eight track tape my parents actually had was something by the Bee Gees and they didn’t like it very much.

I probably had that same eight track. I had an eight track of the Bee Gees. It was their greatest hits.

Yeah, that was it.

About 1979.

You guys have revamped your lineup. You have Dino Cazares and Rhys Fulber back in the fold.

Yeah, Dino rejoined us this past year and we got Rhys back in to produce us. To me that was very important. I wanted to return to a classic sound that seems to have gotten lost over the years and to me this is the sound of Fear Factory I always enjoyed. It brings elements of music that I like in music and I wanted to have that shine again so obviously Dino’s riffs are a big part of the sound. Then Rhys is the silent fifth member like George Martin to The Beatles.

You guys have gotten back to your industrial roots.

Yeah, as a fan of music I’m more of an industrial fan than anything else.

You guys have put out Mechanize which is your first album in five years. Why was there such a long period in between records? I guess it was probably due to internal combustion.

Now that I think about it, Fear Factory albums always came out every three years. This one took a little longer, it wasn’t really internal combustion but the management. I was trying to get the manager fired and they wouldn’t fire her. I was like well, until you fire her I’m not going to do anything because I’m not going to make her any money. They wouldn’t fire her so I had to move forward and make it happen on my own. They wanted an element involved in my business that I did not want there and they didn’t want to respect that. I decided to make it happen without them. But it took a few years.

If you go back through the history of the music industry, once a lot of these people got managers involved and basically let those people handle all of the business aspect, a lot of times they found themselves getting fucked.

Very true.

I was reading that when you guys were writing Mechanize, it was loosely based on Alvin Toffler’s 1984 Treatise Third Wave. I started reading up on him a little bit.

Yeah, I won’t say loosely based but definitely inspired. The Third Wave inspired, a book by Richard Dawkins called The God Delusion was an inspiration, and also the online film Zeitgeist and the second part Addendum were definitely influential as well. Those are just a few of the major sources that I drew inspiration from. The Alvin Toffler book definitely blew my mind that this guy was writing a sociological look at history and making not a prediction but analyzing the future based on past history of how the culture is moving forward. I’m already aware of it but it made me even more aware of where the world’s going and even that he wrote that book in 1980, it blew my mind.

It’s amazing how people can be almost prophetic about stuff. When I was a kid I used to watch The Twilight Zone on TV.

I was just watching that today.

It was a show that started out in the 1950’s or 60’s and the episode I was thinking about was where everyone is living in houses where you tell the stove to turn on and it starts cooking. This one guy gets so absolutely sick of it that he starts taking an ax to everything. One thing that stood out the most was on the subway, everyone was sitting there on cell phones just constantly blabbing and I was thinking damn, here it is 2010 and every time you see someone driving down the street they’ve got a cell phone.

Or a Blue Tooth or a Blackberry or something.

And they’re constantly blabbing whether they’re in line at the post office, the bank, or the supermarket. How did Rod Serling know?

That’s the thing about science fiction writers. They see where the world is going. They’re excellent observers and they take what they see at their current time and push it forward. It’s really easy to do if you’re creative enough to do it. There’s a lot to be said about Rod Serling. There was a Twilight Zone episode that inspired a lot of Obsolete actually. It started in 1959. You’re correct. I think it ran all the way to 1965. It was so awesome. It’s easy to really predict the future world if you study past history. That’s what Alvin Toffler did. We’re already on the cuff of the Third Wave and it’s coming and it’s a world in which information is more valuable than currency. The sense of individuality is to me false but everyone is coming to the sense where they can work for themselves. The industrial complex is coming to an end. The idea of industrial discipline is coming to an end. It’s all going to be about individual source and that to me is what the third wave is. It’s coming.

Yeah, he has this term that he calls the “prosumer”. He’s talking about where basically the middleman is being put out of the way. You go to an ATM machine or you go to the post office and you deal with a machine that does your postage for you. Now with grocery stores where you go through your own self-checkout. It’s putting the human being out of the picture which I don’t think is all that healthy.

No. Basically people are losing jobs because of it. If you don’t need a middleman. People have been trying to get rid of the middleman for ages because that’s money out of their pocket. That’s what it’s leading to.

I was just talking today with someone about how the Internet itself has revolutionized business. Especially the music industry. It’s changed a lot from the way it was in the past. I was reading that your first release “Powershifter” had 400,000 online plays. Back in the day you were number so and so on the Billboard Chart. Now it’s all about how many people listen to you on the Internet.

I didn’t know. That’s incredible. I think the music industry was forced to change. The Internet forced them to change. They weren’t ready to change and the Internet was revolutionary but the music industry wasn’t ready for it and they had no idea the impact it would have on the music consumer.

That’s because I think the music industry basically came down to nothing but dollars and cents and how much profit they could make from it. I think people had enough of that after a while. To some extent anything you do involves money but it seemed to take the artistic control and creativity out of the picture.

Yeah, it became its own industrial complex. It lost its sight of creativity and artist development. It wasn’t art development, it was product development. That’s why we have crap bands like ‘N Sync and Backstreet Boys. We’ve got American Idolbullshit.

I know people who are so addicted to that show and I think I saw part of one episode of it. I thought that one guy was such an obnoxious asshole.

They’re all obnoxious. Are you talking about Simon Cowell?

Yeah. I can’t stand that guy.

Oh, my God. He’s the best guy on the show.

Is he?

He’s the only honest one.

I don’t know. He turned me off.

I give that guy full credit. The only honest one on the whole damn show. He expects more out of people. He doesn’t expect stupid talent. More power to you Simon. I’m from Texas and I like calling people on their bullshit.

I do too. Sometimes that gets people really pissed at me. Oh, well. If you candy coat things that doesn’t seem to have the same impact.

No, you’re either cut out for the business or you’re not.

I guess you guys have released your second single which is “Fear Campaign” and your video for that just premiered online.

Yeah, it’s going to debut on Headbanger’s Ball on Monday. So, it’ll hit the TV real shortly but yeah it was released online because of everything else and it’s been an object of great debate.

Hey, if it gets people talking.

I’m all about it. That’s what a fear campaign is all about.

The record is going to be officially released on February 9 which is this coming Tuesday. I would hope you guys are getting rave reviews on it because I got a hold of the record and I love it.

Thank you. Everyone I’ve talked to, it’s been very positive. I’m not ashamed to say that I’m very proud of the work that we accomplished on this album. I’m glad to see that our fans are enjoying it. Critics will be critics. People will like it. People will not. If it’s getting positive reviews, that’s fine. I’m very proud of the work we did.

It’s absolutely terrific and it’s so reminiscent of your earlier sound but not quite the same. More fresh in a way.

To me it’s a mature record. A young band couldn’t have written a record like this. It’s too focused. It’s too purposeful and mature and everything is directed. It’s crafted very well so it took 20 years to accomplish this album.

When you’re younger you really don’t pay that much attention to things and you aren’t really that observant. As you get older you start focusing on things, noticing things, and observing things.

That’s a good way of putting it.

What I thought was cool is that you guys used someone like Alvin Toffler as an inspiration. That really gets people’s attention. I know it got mine because I had never heard of the guy before. I was like who the fuck is that so I got online and started reading up on him. Hopefully other people will do that.

Yeah, absolutely. I have this moment in time to maybe help people. Maybe educate people. To use my voice in a positive way and the little time I have, I want to use it to the best extent I can. If I can enable people to use their minds properly and think about the world and think about the future, maybe I’m doing something positive for the world.

People have such short attention spans and everything is a 30 second sound byte. That’s not very healthy.

Well, in a world with ADD.

Yeah, they even have a syndrome for it now.

I think it’s all bullshit.

I do too. “My kid has ADD. My kid has ADHD. My kid has some bullshit.” Hey, let’s drug him!

Exactly. That’s another conversation about the pharmaceutical companies making up a syndrome so they can exploit their newest drug. Remember that bullshit called Restless Leg Syndrome?

Yeah.

I have a remedy for that. Get up and fucking walk.

Exactly. My day job is being an OTC manager at a pharmacy and it’s amazing how many fucking drugs they have out there and none of that shit cures anything. It just controls the symptoms. At the same time every time I look in my e-mail, there are 50 million fucking recalls on this stuff. I‘m like what kind of shit are people putting in their systems.

Exactly. A few years ago when the pharmaceutical commercials started becoming more prevalent on TV, my favorite part was you’ve got to listen to the side effects.

I know!

Vomiting, nose bleeding, and/or death.

The and/or death is my favorite part. Okay, I think I’ll just deal with the condition.

The condition you have already that the drug you’re taking is making it even worse. Or it can create something even more worse.

And then you need 20 more drugs to combat that.

That’s the idea isn’t it?

Yeah, sure is. I work around all these elderly people and they’re like “oh I take 14 different medications a day.” I’m like how the fuck do you keep up with all that?

There’s no money in a cure.

Apparently not. Are you guys going to be touring pretty soon or are you currently engaged in that?

Yeah, we’ve been touring for a little bit already. We did South America in December. We just finished Australia last week. We’re getting ready to go the U.K. next week and Europe for about three and a half weeks and then we come back to the States. Try to do a month here. Yeah, we’re hitting it.

Oh cool. So I’m going to see you guys in Dallas, right?

Absolutely.

All right. That’s what I like to hear. I love my metal. Do you have any other thoughts or comments?