Fear Factory guitarist Dino Cazares spoke with Metal Wani in the below interview and among the topics covered were his recent comments on how he felt various Fear Factory riffs influenced the likes of Korn, Coal Chamber and Meshuggah. Speaking on that, Cazares this time chose to include some of the bands that influenced him as well, offering:
“I didn’t call them out. If anybody really listens to the podcast, and, actually, if anybody didn’t just read the headline… A lot of web sites like to create controversy, so they can get more clicks, which generates more ad space, which generates more money. So they put their own spin on headlines. And I never called out those bands. All I was talking about how was… If you listen to the whole podcast, I specifically talked about a couple of songs. Now, me and Burton went to go see a band called Helmet. The next day we wrote a song called ‘Scapegoat‘. So, in other words, that means Helmet inspired me to write a song called ‘Scapegoat‘.
Which, later on, maybe subconsciously, or maybe unsubconsciously, might have inspired Korn to write ‘Blind‘. So that similar groove, which I was talking about, went that far. Now, there was another song we did called ‘Suffer Age‘. And that was kind of more inspired by Godflesh. Godflesh came ten years before we did, and we were inspired by Godflesh, and then that particular riff, another band, Coal Chamber, was inspired by, obviously — subconsciously or unsubconsciously. And then Meshuggah, in 2014, the riff was the same.
And I was only talking about how that riff and that influence is still prevalent today. And if you listen to the podcast, that’s what I said; I never said anybody ripped anybody off. I never said that. People just like to do that. I actually wrote a few web sites and said, ‘Hey, why did you say that? That’s uncool. I can see why people are getting pissed off.’ And a lot of people did get pissed off, you know what I mean? And some of [the web sites] changed their headline — they changed it.
Like Metal Injection, in particular, changed it. So, we were only talking about how the influence and certain riffs, like, how far it’s gone, and how far it’s still going. And I think it’s cool, you know what I mean? There’s only so many riffs to go around, there’s only so many melodies to go around. It’s hard to be original. It’s hard not to be influenced by something. I could be at a fucking supermarket, and I heard a killer melody that I might have liked, and then a couple of days later here, I wrote a song… And then, later on, [someone says], ‘Hey, man, that sounds like that melody.’
‘I don’t remember hearing that.’ Maybe just subconsciously you had it stuck in your head and then you wrote it. You know what I mean? And later on you write it. It just happens. Those kinds of things just happen. Some of those bands have been quoted saying that Fear Factory influenced them. And that’s great. I mean, we were influenced by a lot of bands. And I can tell you every band that we were influenced by that we love — everything from Helmet to fucking early, early Nirvana to every grindcore, death metal band to all the killer industrial bands: Godflesh, Ministry, Nine Inch Nails, KMFDM. All that stuff influenced us. So that’s what Fear Factory was. On our first record, you hear more of the influence. I believe that when we… You hear the influence, but you also hear something new on our first record.
Obviously, with the grindcore, death metal growls to the melodic vocals. You hear… ‘Okay, wow! I never really heard anybody combine the two together.’ You might have heard somebody sing like that on a song — all melodically on one song, or all heavy on one song — but combining the two, that was something that was different on that album. But at the same time, you can hear our influences on the first record, on ‘Soul Of A New Machine‘.
But it wasn’t until “Demanufacture” came along, where we discovered who we were and what we were, to where we created our own sound and our own… something that could be inspiring to other people. And I think that’s what most people know us for.”
Fear Factory‘s new album “Genexus” is in stores now.
