PHOTO CREDIT: Erica Vincent
Extreme music pioneer, multimedia talent, and iconoclastic provocateur Burton C. Bell is known as the voice of FEAR FACTORY, which defined futuristic anxiety, existential desperation, and steadfast resistance.
He has continued to explore themes of dystopian angsts, identity, and technology gone wrong in his solo work.
Today, Bell has shared the lyric video for his new single "SAVAGES". Watch and listen BELOW.
When he barks "No one is coming to save you now," the finest hairs on the back of your neck will stand on end.
"The lyrics for "SAVAGES" were not realized until the day after the tumultuous, presidential election," states Bell. "Upon learning that many Evangelical Christians turned a blind eye to the scarce, moral compass in a fallible candidate to elect as president was staggering. I decided that the working title was quite suitable to describe those evangelicals that willfully elected a compulsive liar, prolific adulterer, conman, convicted felon, adjudicated rapist, and documented racist who's only goal is to fleece everyone in his path to gain power. If this is the paragon of their divine providence, there is no god coming to save them now."
He finishes, ""SAVAGES" IS TO BE PLAYED AT MAXIMUM VOLUME."
Indeed, it is best consumed loudly!
Bell heads to Australia next month for a solo run. All dates are below.
BURTON C. BELL ON TOUR:
- 6/11 - Brisbane - The Triffid *
- 6/12 - Newcastle - King St. Band Room **
- 6/13 - Sydney - Factory Theatre **
- 6/14 - Melbourne - Corner Hotel ^
* With MONSTER AROUND US
** With MORTALITY
^ With THE LAST MARTYR
"I'm starting my solo career," Bell says enthusiastically. "I'm working with different producers and co-songwriters, making music that I love, with full control of the music and creative direction."
Bell's discography includes multiple live and recorded collaborations with BLACK SABBATH icon Geezer Butler and JOURNEY's Deen Castronovo (as GZR); industrial maverick Al Jourgensen and MINISTRY; and guest vocal appearances with Pitchshifter, Conflict, Soil, Static-X, Soulfly, and Delain, among others. He's the vocalist of ASCENSION OF THE WATCHERS and CITY OF FIRE and, of course, the co-creator of FEAR FACTORY and the only musician to appear on every FEAR FACTORY release from 1992 through 2024.
"FEAR FACTORY ushered in an entirely new strand of metal when they emerged from the sweatboxes of L.A. in the early '90s," Metal Hammer wrote. "Demanufacture was so innovative that it sounds as fresh today as it did then; a blistering collision of metal and hardcore that easily rivals any of its peers. In short, a masterpiece," wrote Kerrang! in an anniversary retrospective. It's a Decibel Magazine Hall Of Fame album, alongside classic records by Scorpions, Judas Priest, Slayer, Anthrax, and Emperor.
FEAR FACTORY created a sound that revolutionized extreme metal, defined in no small part by Bell's innovative scream/sing dichotomy and the influences he brought from post-punk and industrial. Songs like "Replica", "Linchpin", "Edgecrusher", "Fear Campaign", "Archetype", "Cyber Waste" and "Zero Signal" are modern metal anthems. Demanufacture (1995) and the RIAA gold-certified Obsolete (1998) are genre-redefining works heralded by fans and critics as essential albums. Orwell, Bradbury, Blade Runner, and sophisticated sci-fi and fantasy works fed Bell's lyrics and concepts.
The band toured the world with Metallica, Slipknot, Korn, Megadeth, and Ozzy Osbourne, taking bands like System Of A Down and Static-X out as support acts in their early stages. After years of behind-the-scenes band member turmoil and legal issues, Bell left FEAR FACTORY in the fall of 2020.
In the chorus of "Anti-Droid" he declares: "I'd rather be dead than a slave to the factory."
Bell says "Anti-Droid" is "a statement about breaking free. Breaking the bonds of what I felt was a prison in many ways. Not just financially or contractually but creatively, as well. I felt constrained to this format we'd written ourselves into. The 'factory' doesn't have a capital F. It's the factory of the music industry, a certain form of business, and priorities. Being a slave to an established way of thinking is not really freedom. I am moving forward."
Like the faithful cover of RAMMSTEIN's "Du Hast" he released in 2023, or the cover of "Enter Sandman" recorded with DANZIG's John Christ and METALLICA's Robert Trujillo more than a decade before, Bell's solo work embodies the best of hard rock, metal, and industrial's past, present, and future. "Anti-Droid" is but the opening salvo in a brand-new campaign, which will see Burton C. Bell releasing increasingly innovative yet classic feeling, ever-engaging solo material. It also sets the stage for future live performances, certain to deliver the anthems that have defined his body of work, songs rarely played from City Of Fire and G/Z/R, and diverse deep cuts from the FEAR FACTORY catalog.
"Never be destroyed by your own creation."
