Artwork: a peculiar demon face FF thing, wouldn't be out of place in the grafitti in one of those places skaters hang out. Anyway, to the music, which is in the order i listened to them as i wrote this review:
540,000 degrees fahrenheit - even though it's not in metric, it still conveys a concept of extreme heat
. . It's not quite heavy enough for my liking, as an opening track, and near the start it sounds like Burt is perhaps trying to fit too many words into the melodic part of the song. As the song progresses, that kink appears to be ironed out and it's smooth, if a little too light in my personal taste.There's a heavy part around two thirds the way through in a smoother transition than a similar part in digimortal's Invisible Wounds: Dark Bodies, this heavy bit made me like the song a lot more than I would've otherwise.
Transgression - Fucking cool from the get go, an excellent title track. Lots of hate for the way things are in the US at the moment. Strangely, in many of the melodic guitar parts, Burt stays in "gruff" mode, which seems to amplify the torture in his voice. These parts are followed by flashes of mournful melodic signing and returns to his gruff voice. Ends on a good heavy note with pounding double bass.
Spinal Compression - Starts out with standard fear factory fare drums, a few screams and a cool rising and falling set of double bass sequences, then a more manic part, with creepy synth accompanying. I can't really think of any other FF songs this is similar to, this whole album is really quite different to what they've done before. Good and heavy anyway.
Empty Vision - the opening guitars and drums are very heavy, making you expect a heavier song. Then it passes into a lighter note and exemplary melodic vocals. There's a quick burst of gruff vocals, then a return to mournful melodies. The double bass keeps up the tempo, seemingly at odds with the guitars, which have heavier moments with reduced double bass, and lighter moments with reduced bass drumming and more incorporation of the other drums. Then it evolves rather unexpectedly into a more quirky tune of riffs ending in mechanical-sounding squeaks and squals. This is a song that counfounds your expectations a lot.
Echoes of My Scream - a slow and calm song. More depressing than "Bite the hand that bleeds" and quieter vocals. Reminscent of sleep, very slow drumming, wouldn't be out of place from an indie band. Keyboards or violins join in later and amplify the emotion with a speeding up drum beat. A return to the slow stuff then slides in there. To be completely honest, I find this song quite boring for the slow parts, and I'm a fan of sludge metal. It sounds too rocky for me, not metal enough for my personal tastes, though it has that rarest of things, a Fear Factory guitar solo. Still, if it's turned into a single and gets them some mainstream success, I'd be fine with that, so long as I don't have to meet lame FF fans.
Supernova - weenie upbeat song. Hate it. Wouldn't be out of place on some girl film as victory music. Don't like it at all. There's one bit where it sounds it might evolve into a heavy bit, but it never comes. It's not unlistenable, but it's not particularly good. FF mini soloes near the end. I find it ironic that the most weenie FF songs have metal attributes like soloes while their more aggressive and better songs would be considered "nu metal" undoubtedly.
I will follow - sounds like U2, don't like it. Not Fear Factoried up enough, unlike their cover of "School" on Archetype, which I thought was great, and far superior to Nirvana's. This song, however, I would probably skip every time it came on. I hope they never play this live when I watch them.
Millenium - ACE start, sinister and everything, the rest of the song is quite plodding for FF,with tiny parts that remind me of CKY. The general tune of the song actually reminds me of RA2's "grinder" track. The chorus parts I'm not particularly fond of, but they're okay. About halfway through there's a good riff for a while, and then a return to the plodding. I get the feeling from this song that due to overworking raymond on archetype, they're going easy on the drums on this album. A cool song, but not quite as cool as the opening would have me believe.
Empire - Nice and fast and clearly metal. Not as fast as some of the faster songs on archetype, but making good use of the double bass nonetheless. Good riff throughout, good use of sinister sounding guitars, a sudden speed rap comes from burt out of nowhere in it. He only seems to do it once, and I think it's better like that.
Moment of Impact - Quality song, through and through. I associate this song by imagery to descent on obsolete and whichever song it was on archetype that had the line "falling away again" in it. This is very fear factory, very metal, and cool harsh vocals from Burt. Very repetitive and machine-like.
New Promise - another slow and depressing indie-esque song from the start. Not really my thing, but it gets better. I wouldn't call this one of their better songs, but probably better than stuff like no one and byte block on digimortal. There's also some soloing in this. The way the song fits together actually reminds me of mastodon, and I think this song will really grow on me, like that band has.
Contagion - it starts out sounding dirty. You know they have the concept down on this song before the main riff arrives. Doom and death and gasmasks imagery as the song continues into a fearsome heavy chunk. Burt has some extremely low vocals, only just above the Soul of a new machine level. The melodic parts that follow incorporate either keyboards or real violins and I think it works. The pissed off heavy parts work great, and even though I really like the song, it's like the heavy and soft parts belnog in seperate songs. But it's not something that really bothers me, since overall it's an amazing song. Probably my favourite from the album. Unique and powerful, in a direction they've not been in before.
Overall? Good album, worth buying whether you're into Fear Factory or not, there's probably something you like on it. They're exploring new musical territory in this one, so they're not going to make an album that pleases everyone, including me. I certainly won't regret buying it.
In comparison to their other albums? Personally, I would put it under Archetype, Obsolete and Demanufacture. In personal preference, I would put it on the level of SOANM, but for completely different reasons. Clearly, their style has evolved a lot since then, and where I disliked SOANM for being "too heavy" for how I viewed FF, this is too soft for the same reasons. That said, as with both albums, I like the majority of the songs and think they are well within acceptable heaviness tolerances, just the odd song doesn't quite fit with me. Still better than digimortal, though.
