In 1992, Fear Factory released their acclaimed debut album Soul of a New Machine, the first of many that dealt with the turbulent relationship between man and technology; if we allow computers to become self-aware and more intelligent than their creators is there a risk that one day they may turn on us? This has been an issue that science fiction writers and filmmakers have fought with for decades, from cult author Philip K. Dick to classic movies like The Terminator and The Matrix, but it has also been a concept that has found its way into popular music.
This is a debate that has fuelled much of Fear Factory‘s work, from their first record and through other works like Digimortal, with bassist Christian Olde once telling KindaMuzik, “What if you can download your memory onto a computerchip and save it in cyberspace and then download it in a clone of you, it grows your age. They put a chip in there and the clone is gonna have your soul. What is the soul, you know.”
The Industrialist, their eighth studio album, was released this week through Candlelight Records and once again they are posing questions regarding technology. In a new interview with Loud Mag, frontman Burton C. Bell explains the concept behind their latest offering; “The twist this time is that, obviously, this time it is from the viewpoint of the machine,” the singer explains. “The Industrialist is how a machine becomes sentient, and with this new-found knowledge it has found the will to exist, the will to survive. It’s basically teaching other models of its kind, that have become sentient as well, how to survive. How to fight man. How to take down the establishment that man has created. The establishment that is also trying to disassemble them at the same time. So The Industrialist is the protagonist, but it’s also our antagonist.”
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