Fear Factory guitarist Dino Cazares has confirmed that he was indeed behind a recent post on the Fear Factory Reddit, in which he outlined several issues he had working with the band’s now former vocalist Burton C. Bell. Bell of course announced his acrimonious departure from the band in September of 2020.
Cazares made that post in reply to being criticized for his decision to continue on with the band without Bell and his own assertions that Bell no longer had the chops to perform live. Cazares‘ reply read:
“easy for you to say because you didn’t have to deal with someone who didn’t want to be there. You didn’t see what went on behind the scenes.
He wasn’t motivated and constantly had to be pushed by producers, record company ,management and my self just to get a record done ,which his part took for ever and great engineers to make him sound like a million bucks. So don’t be fooled, studio is one thing live is where u hear the real person.
You can only push or try to motivate someone so much, if they don’t want to do it then they don’t want to do it.
There was a lot of time wasted, because he would disappear for months and one time he was gone almost a whole year. When we were supposed to be making a record together, his lack of communication just sucked, we would get worried something happened to him. We understand if u want space just tell us you were going to escape for a couple of months or going to work on a solo project or whatever all we asked was to let us know, he failed at that and lied about where he was.
He was unprepared to make a record had very little lyrics written. We were forced to hire outside lyricist to help with vocal hooks, melodies to re-writing his lyrics etc…
I always felt he was looking for a way out. Like hoping one of his other bands would sell allot of records so he wouldn’t have to come back to FF for any reason.”
Bell‘s departure followed the resolution of years of legal battles over the band’s trademarks which saw him go bankrupt twice. Those suits were filed by ex-Fear Factory members Raymond Herrera and Christian Olde Wolbers separately against Bell and Dino Cazares.
Cazares would emerge from the suits with 100% control of the band. That decision didn’t sit well with Bell and the already estranged relationship between him and Cazares has continued to sour in the press as of late.
Several years before Bell‘s exit, he and Cazares recorded a new Fear Factory album together, which is now headed for a June 18th release. Bell himself had originally announced that album a few years back as being titled “Monolith“, before Cazares publicly objected.
The record was eventually shelved amid the aforementioned legal battles and will now emerge as “Aggression Continuum” on June 18th. It will still feature a song titled “Monolith” however. If you missed it last week, the track “Disruptor” was recently launched as the first single from it and can be found here.
Despite no longer being a member, the album will feature the vocal tracks Bell recorded for it several years prior. Meanwhile, Cazares is down to the final candidates for who will next front Fear Factory. He recently told Temple Of Bleh of that (via Blabbermouth.net):
“We’re at the point where I’m gonna decide on a singer any day now. There’s multiple people that are really good — really good. Even some females that are really good. And making a decision is gonna be definitely tough. ‘Will the fans accept them? Will the fans not accept them?’ — that kind of thing. I worry about all those kinds of things, but at the same time, I’ve gotta be how I was in the beginning and not fear — not fear change.
I necessarily don’t fear change, but I do take it into consideration how fans are gonna take it. I mean, I can’t base everything I do on what a fan might think, because then I’ll never get anything done. But it is definitely a big decision. And whoever I choose, I want them there to be for the long run, because I plan on making a few more records before I’m retired or gone or whatever. It’s definitely a big decision. And it’s some big shoes to fill.”
He continued:
“I wanna get back to playing songs that we never got to play live. It’s no secret that Burt had some vocal issues when he sang live — he just couldn’t sing certain songs. It just happens. Like ‘Linchpin‘, our biggest song, we could never play it. I wanna be able to find a singer that can sing that song and we can play it live every night. I wanna be able to give people the hits — the songs that they paid money to see.”
— Dino Cazares (@DinoCazares) April 19, 2021
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