Given their well-documented history of infighting and legal hang-ups, it’s impressive that Fear Factory are still a going concern in 2024. The gold-certified cyber metal band are currently decades into a career that has presented numerous challenges, with guitarist Dino Cazares remaining as the sole co-founding member still involved.
Troubles involving the group have been pretty well documented at this point. Outside of lineup volatility, legal issues took root back in the mid aughts with the dissolution of the band’s classic era lineup. While Cazares himself had already exited in 2002, vocalist Burton C. Bell, drummer Raymond Herrera and bassist/vocalist Christian Olde Wolbers soldiered on with the group.
The 2006 exit of Herrera and Wolbers saw that pair retain their stakes in the band’s partnership agreement/trademark. As such, they licensed their share of the rights to Bell and co. to continue using the name in exchange for monetary compensation of the profits generated.
Cazares would return to the roster in 2009, but a 2011 chapter 7 bankruptcy filed by Bell really threw a wrench into the works. That bankruptcy filing eventually saw Wolbers and Herrera claim Bell had breached a previously established settlement agreement, alleging Bell had neglected to properly list that arrangement in his bankruptcy filings. Thus, after several years of allegedly not receiving any compensation for their stakes in the band, the pair filed suit against Bell in 2014 for breaching the terms of said settlement.
Ultimately, the courts sided with Herrera and Wolbers in 2015 and Bell was ordered to pay $905,605.41 to the pair. In addition to over 200k in damages, the judge also ruled Bell was on the hook for his ex-bandmates legal fees. While the final ruling of that case bound Bell to the terms of the original pre-bankruptcy settlement agreement, Bell would later go on to dispute the ruling in court.
A judge sided with him on some aspects of his appeal, allowing Bell to establish potential damages against Herrera and Wolbers on select counts of the 2015 ruling found to be in violation of his bankruptcy discharge injunction. It’s not known to the public how that played out.
During this time, Cazares himself also faced similar litigation from Wolbers and Herrera, however, as he’s previously stated, he won that dispute. The legalities obviously didn’t end there however, as a fight for the band’s trademark, then held half 50/50 by Cazares and Bell, played out silently behind the scenes.
In a recent interview with the Life Is Peachy Podcast, Cazares gave an overview of the decades of legal disputes that plagued the influential group. It’s a complicated web that Cazares has addressed in the past, though perhaps not in this much detail. Here’s what he most recently had to say on it:
“[After] I [came] back with Fear Factory, we released four records. Me and Burton got sued by Christian and Raymond for monies owed. We owed them money. I ended up beating my lawsuit against those guys, but Burton ended up losing his lawsuit against those guys and has to pay them a million dollars.
So Burton decides to quit the band. And he said a lot of things in the press, like he only did Fear Factory out of necessity, he only did Fear Factory ’cause he needed money, he didn’t believe a lot of the lyrics he was writing, and blah, blah, blah, blah. He said he felt restrained doing Fear Factory, he felt like he was pigeonholed doing Fear Factory. And that’s fine. I ended up winning my lawsuit against the guys, against Raymond and Christian.
One of the biggest misconceptions is that people thought that I sued Burton, but that’s not true. It was Raymond and Christian who sued us individually. We had separate lawsuits. They sued us separately so they can get separate money. So if they would have won my lawsuit, I would have had to give them a million dollars. I won my lawsuit against them. I didn’t owe them anything.
But, actually, Burton filed for bankruptcy, and when he filed for bankruptcy, he tried to get out of paying those guys. And, unfortunately, he lied in his bankruptcy. That’s a federal offense. Raymond and Christian took him back to court, made him open up the bankruptcy.
The bankruptcy was null and void. So Burton had to pay back those guys, and they took all of Burt‘s assets. Assets, meaning whatever you own, whether it’s a house, a car, a trademark, copyright, business, so on and so on. They took all that away from him for lying in court.
When you go through a bankruptcy, the bankruptcy court sells your assets to try to make money back, to pay back the people you owe money to. So, when I found out that Burton‘s assets were up for sale, my lawyer contacted the court of Pennsylvania and said, ‘Hey, look, we’re interested in buying this Fear Factory trademark,’ Burton‘s half.
At this point, I owned half and Burton owned half. Raymond and Christian did not own the name at all whatsoever. They were only owed money. That’s it. But they didn’t own the trademark. Even though they tried to take the trademark from us and try to find every possible way to do that. ‘Cause that’s what lawyers do, right? They were not successful.
So, the bankruptcy court owned Burton‘s half of the trademark. They put it up for sale. It’s like eBay. They auction it off. So I had to place a bid if I wanted that trademark. And that’s what I did. I put a bid up. Now, Burton couldn’t buy his own assets back because he already lied in court. It was a federal offense. So he couldn’t buy his assets back.
So he didn’t even have the opportunity to do that legally. I figured, ‘Hey, I’m gonna try to buy this name.’ And I wanted to bring Burton and say, ‘Hey, look, I got the name. Let’s just continue.’ So I put a bid up for the trademark. They wanted a lot of money for it. And Raymond and Christian put a bid up for it as well.
But eventually I ended up winning the bid, I ended up winning the auction, and I owned Burton‘s half of the name, which meant I owned full 100 percent of the trademark of Fear Factory. So I reached out to Burton and I said, ‘Hey, just come back 50-50,’ which I found out technically, even though I bought Burton‘s 50 percent of the trademark, I couldn’t give it to him.
I couldn’t legally buy it and then give it to him because if I did, then that means I was colluding and buying a name and just giving it to him. It goes against what the court’s orders were. So I couldn’t even do that, but I could pay Burton 50 percent of whatever we earned as Fear Factory. Now there was a problem with that. The problem was Raymond and Christian froze his assets.
If Burton would have come back to Fear Factory, whatever he earns from Fear Factory, a percentage of that would have to go to Raymond and Christian to pay back the million of dollars. So Burton didn’t wanna go out there on tour and [be] working his ass off and having to pay those guys a percentage of what he earns on tour.
Basically, whatever money is earned from Burton Bell‘s name in Fear Factory, that goes to Raymond and Christian. So in other words, if the song ‘Replica‘ earns money on Spotify, that money goes to Raymond and Christian‘s lawyers. It’s kind of like child support.
If you’re a guy having to pay child support, but you happen to be that guy that doesn’t pay his child support, the court can go after your money that you’re earning from your job. They could take a percentage of that money and pay your kids. That’s basically what was happening to Burt.
Now, Burt can go get a regular job. Let’s say he went got a job at [McDonald’s]. He wouldn’t have to give him a portion of that money, because that’s not being earned by Fear Factory. I could be wrong. There might be some technicalities where I’m a little wrong, but it’s basically what happened. So, in reality, me playing the Fear Factory songs live goes to pay back Burton‘s debt to those guys. But Burton doesn’t see that.
There’s a whole other side to it that fans just don’t know. And I get it. They’re not in this industry. They’re just a fan listening to the songs and they don’t understand how all this works.”
In the wake of Cazares taking on full ownership of the trademark as mentioned above, and the related financial stipulations put upon Bell by the courts, Bell exited the band in an acrimonious 2020 split that played out in the press and on social media.
Since then, Cazares replaced Bell with vocalist Milo Silvestro and tentatively aims to have a new album from the group out sometime in 2025.
[via Blabbermouth.net]
