Hatebreed frontman Jamey Jasta has Fear Factory, etc. guitarist Dino Cazares as his latest podcast guest on ‘The Jasta Show‘ (hear it in full below.) It’s a friendly conversation in which Cazares opens up on a wide variety of topics. One topic approached early in the podcast is Fear Factory‘s understated influence in metal, of which Cazares joked: “to most people I’m still a Mexican working the fields, that’s where I’m at. I’m still picking lettuce.” He further explained:
“Like we took that groove element and wrote a song [called] “Scapegoat“, if you go listen to “Scapegoat” today and you listen to Korn “Blind” it’s the same riff. If you go listen to a song called “Suffer Age” from our first record, and listen a song like Coal Chamber “Loco“, or you listen to a song from Meshuggah… “Koloss“, I can’t remember the song, something about ‘bones’ or whatever [“Break Those Bones Whose Sinews Gave It Motion“]—it’s the same riff. Like it went from back 1990 all the way to 2014 on the last fucking Meshuggah record, like oh my god that riff went that far. And dudes are still doing it.”
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When asked if people have come out and admit to taking direct inspiration from Fear Factory, he replied:
“There has been people who have admitted it. Like Devin Townsend admits it, when he was doing Strapping Young Lad, he was influenced by Fear Factory. I know the Meshuggah guys have admitted it, like way back, they said they were influenced by us. That’s really about it… Oh, the Killswitch guys have mentioned it. People have borrowed it in many different genres. But one of the main things is the vocal style. Burt‘s vocal style, you know what I mean? In every different genre from screamo bands to metalcore bands, to melodic death metal bands…”
The topic also shifted to nu metal, of which Cazares shared the following tale:
“Can I tell you a story about the nu metal thing? When “Demanufacture” came out we had a song called “New Breed“, right? And we blew up in Europe so everybody in Europe was calling it the ‘new breed of metal’.
They were taking that term, everything that came out, ‘new breed of metal’, ‘new breed of metal’. New Korn came out, ‘new breed of metal’, they were taking our title: ‘new breed of metal’.
Then they just shortened the word to ‘nu metal’ and it started in Europe, in the UK, to be exact. Nu metal. And I remember when the first Korn record came out, ‘oh they sound like hip hop’… They sound like Helmet meets Prong meets Cypress Hill meets Fear Factory. They were actually using our name to describe Korn for the first album, it was trippy.”
Later in the chat Cazares said of the band’s own flirtations with nu metal:
“I never really considered us nu metal. We were hints of it, yes, on “Digimortal“. That’s because the bass player [Christian Olde Wolbers] at the time was really into that and wanted to bring all that into it… DJing… I lost that battle. That’s ultimately one of the reasons that got me kicked out, of my own band. Christian was a DJ, was scratching on the record. I was like ‘I don’t want that shit’ I had to fight for it, but I got kicked out, because those were things I didn’t want.
I didn’t think we needed to go that way on “Digimortal“. We needed go more back to the roots, but the label was pushing for it, Monte Conner, Nickelback money came in… They saw $ signs, ‘you gotta go platinum on this record,’ ‘you need radio producers’, ‘you need these people,’ ‘you need those people.’ And it just fucking… I put my foot down as much as I could and I lost the battle. So all that money came in, so the label was like you gotta write these kind of songs, and it was like I was fighting as much as I could, but I lost.”
A comparison of the songs Cazares mentioned above can be found at the bottom of this post. Meanwhile, Fear Factory‘s falling out with ex-drummer Gene Hoglan was also spoken of, as well as some unsavory times touring with Megadeth in the past and the problems with Divine Heresy. Speaking of Hoglan‘s departure from the band, Cazares made a shocking revelation:
“When we were making the record “Mechanize“, Gene was like if I gotta for Dethklok, I gotta go for Dethklok. So while we were recording the album, he left.
So we were kinda left with just his drum tracks of what he did. And we’re like ‘man I wish we could do something better’ because we just felt that he didn’t bring a lot of those elements that he did like on those Death records like “Symbolic“—those double ride parts and all this killer cymbal stuff, and these killer rolls… And then he left cause Dethklok called, he left.”
“So anyway, he had to leave and we were kind of left with all these tracks we felt that kind of could have been better. So I had to hire two other drummers to come in and add to Gene Hoglan‘s parts and change some of the parts… He doesn’t know. Now he knows. We were kinda bummed, he was like ‘sorry daddy-o, gotta go!’ So we were left high and dry and we’re like okay, these tracks some more shit, cause we just felt that he didn’t do what he could have done, so I had to hire two other guys to come in and play his parts. Two other well-known drummers that I’ve played with.”
Cazares also took some time to criticize his own bands work when he was out of the band, saying “Slave Labor” was a ripoff of “Shock“.
“Shock“:
The songs Cazares cited as being influenced by Fear Factory:
Fear Factory‘s “Scapegoat“:
Korn‘s “Blind:
Fear Factory‘s “Suffer Age“:
Coal Chamber‘s “Loco“:
Meshuggah‘s “Break Those Bones Whose Sinews Gave It Motion“:
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