Metal, Hardcore, Indie, Rock
In a recent interview with Impact Metal Channel, Fear Factory frontman Milo Silvestro discussed the band’s new single, “Roboticist,” which was released in late August via Nuclear Blast, as per Blabbermouth. The song is the band’s debut release with new members Silvestro and drummer Pete Webber, who have been a part of Fear Factory’s touring lineup for almost three and a half years. Milo stated this.
‘Roboticist’ is the first single off the new upcoming album that’s gonna be out somewhere next year. And we’re really happy to play the first new song of this new lineup live [on tour in Europe]. And people apparently are — they seem to love it and they seem to sing it already and just be familiar with it and accept this new era, so we’re really grateful and happy.
Milo explained what fans may expect from the new Fear Factory album.
It should be 10 songs. And having a new singer, let alone a new lineup… I mean, Tony’s been in the band for quite a few years now, even though they had a gap, because of the legal suit, but he’s still been in the band since 2015, 2014. But Pete is also a new drummer. I’m the new vocalist. So, it’s not always easy for fans, especially the most skeptical ones, to accept a new lineup, especially with a new vocalist, because for some reason people always think that a vocalist, particularly, it’s like the soul of the band. So it’s not always easy for fans to digest it. This change was already a pretty significant and huge change, so we purposely tried to stay on the Fear Factory realm sound-wise, stay on that sound.
Of course, as a lot of people noticed, both haters and fans and supporting fans, I tried to sound as much as possible like the original vocalist, Burton C. Bell, because I think that this band… To me, as a fan of the band also, it couldn’t sound any different, because Burt has been such an iconic vocalist, and I don’t think that any other vocalist in the world sounds like him or ever sounded like him, both in harsh vocals and clean vocals. He was the pioneer of the combined style of harsh vocals and melodic vocals. And his harsh tone and his clean tone were so identifiable. So me and Dino never felt like chang[ing] that.
One of the reason why Dino got interested in me as a vocalist, it’s because I was so influenced by Burton C. Bell vocally that it already came natural to me to sound like him. It’s not even that I tried to sound like him; it just comes natural. But when I got hired in Fear Factory, I studied his style, his sound, his nuances even more to pay homage to his sound even more and provide the fans the real Fear Factory vocal sound, as close as possible. I’m saying this just to say that the record, vocal-wise, and guitar-wise and everything-wise is gonna sound like classic modern Fear Factory. So I definitely say that, to me, it has a lot of ‘Mechanize’, ‘Genexus’, ‘The Industrialist’ kind of vibe. But there is some modern and innovative or fresh elements as well here and there. We tried to put these elements in a way that you’re not gonna change… It’s kind of like a a dish.
I’m Italian, so I’m always gonna do a comparison with pasta. It’s the same pasta recipe, but there is a little sprinkle of a different cheese. So, I brought my influence not only as a vocalist, but also as an effects nerd and tweaker, because I also come from electronic music and turntablism. I mean, there’s no turntables, but I’m just saying I come from that realm — synthesizers, vocoders. In my other small band that I have in Rome, Dead Channel, that I founded years ago, I’d always done live vocoder, kind of like Kraftwerk. Vocoders, for those who don’t know, it’s like a process of a synthesizer that makes your voice a filter for the synth.
So the sound comes out of the synth, but your voice acts like a filter, so you make a synth talk. You can do harmonies and stuff. I’ve always been in love with that. And so I brought some of that. There were some vocoder parts in the new album. And, also the new song ‘Roboticist’ has vocoder parts, so I’m, like, ‘Why not play it live?’ Because, as fans know by now, I love to reproduce live all the vocal effects, and most of them doing myself.
Silvestro spoke on his contributions to Fear Factory’s upcoming album, saying this.
Fear Factory had vocal effects in the past, especially, I think, the album ‘Obsolete’. If you listen, there’s a lot of vocal distortions and filters and flangers and LFOs kind of effects. And I always thought it was a pity that bands don’t reproduce those effects live. But I brought some of these effects on the new record. Like, for instance, there’s also a couple of fast loop effects, when you loop the voice really quick. And it sounds really robotic and machine-like. So I think that it suits the Fear Factory sound. And I also brought some musical ideas, which I’m really grateful to Dino for allowing me to bring my ideas, because he’s the founder and the main songwriter. He’s always been the main songwriter of Fear Factory.
He tracked bass on most of the records. He wrote all of the riffs, like 98% of the riffs, except for the two albums he wasn’t on, but he’s always been the main songwriter. So I would have been okay, I’d have to be okay, with a scenario where he was, like, ‘I write the songs. You go in the studio and you perform what I write.’ But instead — he has a very precise vision, but at the same time, he lets you bring ideas on the table. So that’s why I’m really grateful because compared to him, I’m nowhere as… I’m not a metal icon like he is.
So I’m really grateful that he gave me this opportunity. And so I also proposed some music ideas, being a composer myself — a little bit of synths and keyboards, programming and even a couple of guitar ideas. I was just, like, ‘I know you’re probably not gonna like me bringing in guitar ideas,’ but on one song on the new album, I just brought some guitar ideas, like, ‘Okay, let’s use it.’ I was, like, ‘Oh, really?’ I was so happy that he liked my ideas — just a couple riffs. But, yeah, I’m really grateful that he let me have such a creative space.
