'Digimortal' has a questionable honor to be the first ever Fear Factory album reviewed by me. It also has a questionable honor to be the last ever Fear Factory studio album, considering they won't make a come back. Come back to what?! Read on, please...

Fear Factory were truly good on their debut record 'Soul of a New Machine' (1992) (shit, was it THAT long time ago?!) and totally magnificent on 'Demanufacture' from 1995. I pissed honey when I heard that one! The band managed to create something new. But as years go on, many American bands (and why not bands with other nationality too) have a weird tendency to turn into a "pop metal band". 'Obsolete' had some symptoms of that disease and did not convince me anymore, mostly because of its uninteresting song material. 'Digimortal' takes these "pop metal" tendencies even further. Those bloody remix albums really polluted this band, I quess. This is even danceable! Yes, you read it right, I'm afraid. But still they don't play this music is bars and discos, because it's "too heavy". The songs are mainly under 4 minutes long each, and that's because Dino Cazares wanted to break longer songs with even up to ten riffs into shorter and more simpler ones (he mentioned it on the official video interview).

Fear Factory have always relied on heavy, simplistic (probably not playing-wise), rhythmic guitar riffs and pounding, mechanical beats (Raymond Hererra punishes his drum kit with double bass drum bursts nicely, maybe he even created this style). Once upon a time they made it really well, but now we have a plague called "nu-metal". Some nu-"metal" bands have named F.F. as one of their influences and now F.F. can name nu-"metal" crap as one of their influences! How do times change, my friends...

At the first listen I though and smiled "what great tunes, now they have made another 'Demanufacture'", but as I listened more to this, it became clear that the music is rather shallow. It has not much emotions, depth or soul. It has become trendy. Mostly the songs are just replicas of them and the band's older songs, except slower epic '(Memory Imprints) Never End', which is a really good one. The songs include a lot of synthetization in vein of various digital sounds, beats and in soundtrack vein. This is the legacy of those remix albums. And that bloody rapping on 'Back the Fuck up' by Cypress Hill's B-Real... Why on Earth there MUST be rapping on any metal record nowadays?!?! Simple: More Dollar$.

The theme of the album is life after death. On a fucking computer hard drive! The story is good enough, though. Burton C. Bell's throat is immediately familiar and these "melodic growls" just do not work. His semi-melodic singing is not powerful at all, nor really skillful. So there is quite a lot of piling of harmony vocals to be heard. Not his best work, this one. But at least he has a recognizable voice, and many sung parts are memorable and nicely composed. Even Burton does some rapping, or more like speaking, style vocals on several songs...

The production is an update for previous albums; a bit cold, but pretty punchy. Very digital, fitting with the theme of the album. As is the artwork, which looks nice. The limited digipak version includes four bonus tracks, which aren't bad or great either (three songs from 'Digimortal' sessions and one from a video game).

This is too trendy American heavy music. I'm quite bored by this kind of stuff. I still respect F.F. that much that I must say this wins every fucking nu-"metal" band hands down, and the band still is recognizable. Good luck to you guys with your life and possible new bands. Bring the hard metal back!

A look after 2 decades (February 21st, 2021): I was in need of some Fear Factory, and decided to spin 'Transgression'(2005), almost like "for the first time", I have to admit. Okay, the album is different! So, I somehow got an idea to listen to this one, which I've kept as the worst FF album. I found it to be a good one, and not that "nu-metalic" as I did in 2002. The old score was 6- (just above average, still far from good), and so now I'm ascending it to... - Lane

Rating: 7 (out of 10) ratings explained

Reviewed by Lane
05/24/2002 18:16