Fear Factory are due to play NZ on the 22nd of September 2012, having released their 8th studio album "The Industrialist" earlier in the year.
When I talked to Dino, on the phone, he'd already spent most of the year touring, was on the East Coast of the US mere hours away from taking the stage, at a gig also featuring Soulfly.
Until the 4th of September 2012 or there abouts, a podcast of the hard fast heavy show featuring this interview can be found here:
http://www.95bfm.com/default,18,bcasts.sm?cast=202634
How’s life with you at the moment, and Fear Factory?
Everything’s going great, we’ve just been really busy,
we’ve been on the road supporting the new album, and we’ve been touring pretty
much almost world wide- we’re going to South America again- we’ve been there
earlier this year, we did a US tour, we did a European tour. We’re currently on
another US tour, then we’ll be in Japan, New Zealand, Australia then another
European tour then that’s it for this year. Next year we start up again.
Doing my research I noticed, not sure if you’re on tour
with, but you had a show or two with Soulfly, that’s gotta be pretty cool with
Max [Cavalera] being an old buddy…
yeah, well we have a show, well we had a show this past
week with Soulfly, we have a show tonight with Soulfly and then we have a show
this Saturday with Soulfly, so we’re doing a few shows together. Yeah, it’s
great.
I just want to say that earlier on in the year, a couple
of months back you toured with, as a support, this NZ band Legacy of Disorder-
was supporting you,
Yes, that was the beginning of the world tour, yes.
As a New Zealander I just want to know what you thought
of them, just to make sure they were being good, honest hard working kiwi
metalheads.
Ha ha, yeah,
they’re a great band I mean they came all the way out here, just got in an R.V
and they said Hey lets do it and I commend them for that, for coming so far out
from New Zealand, and they sounded really good, had a really thrash, kind of
cool Testament vibe to them. They were cool, I like them a lot.
I it helps with your brief stop in NZ to get used to the
accents..
say it again?
haha, there you go. I said touring with a NZ band helps
with our accents.
Oh accents, yeah. It’s quite different between Australia
and New Zealand- there’s a difference there.
Aaaaye! Finally, someone from outside of the region
understands!.
Yeah, yeah. There’s definitely a difference but for us, I
still think they’re both kinda funny. [laughs]
Speaking of NZ, you’re doing a show here on the 22nd
September. Basic question- are you looking forward to coming to NZ?
Oh hell yeah. Last time was a year or two ago, a couple
of years ago with Metallica. Yeah, and I remember when we were there they just
had just missed the Earthquake that happened like a week or two before. It was
pretty crazy seeing a lot of the buildings that had fallen down, stuff like
that, but of course we’re kind of used to it being from California [i.e. San
Andreas Fault]- we get earthquakes all the time.
Is this trip to NZ gonna be a no-nonsense fly-in fly-out
type trip, or do you get a bit of time to look around?
I don’t think we’re gonna have that much time. We fly in
straight from Japan, the day before, play a show the next day, fly right back
out to Brisbane. But I’ve spent some time out there before. This is atleast out
eighth or maybe tenth time in New Zealand, maybe more. We love NZ, NZ was one
of the places, along with Australia that really got into Fear Factory right
away, you know way back in the early days- from our first album, ‘Soul of a New
Machine’. The kiwis are very lovely.
We love having you.. After you’re done with us, you’re
off to Europe with Devin Townsend, despite being a dream line-up for me, that’s
gotta be a pretty sweet touring with an old pal like Devin?
Well, yeah- we’ve known Devin way before strapping young
lad even existed. When I first met him, I believe was like 1991 or ‘90, ‘91
something around there- he was playing with Steve Vai, singing in the Steve Vai
band and we kind of hit it off from there and we’ve been friends ever since,
it’s just we finally decided to tour together and it’s going to be great. I
know that ticket sales are doing really well in Europe for that tour and we’re
really excited.
You’ve had a couple of Strapping Young Lad members come
and go..
Yeah, we had Byron Stroud and Gene Hoglan, they were once
in fear Factory at one point. But they decided to do other things. Obviously,
Gene Hoglan, if anyone knows his history he’s in quite a few bands, he’s in
everybody’s band pretty much. And Byron decided to stay with his Canadian
brothers, Three Inches of Blood.
Who’ve you got at the moment, you’ve got Matt DeVries
[ex-Chimaira] filling in on bass and I understand a Mike Heller is on drums.
Yes, we have a guy called Mike Heller on drums, he comes
from a band called Malignancy you can look it up on youtube you can see a lot
of his work it’s pretty intense.
How’ve the new guys been filling in for you?
Oh great, we only pick the best.
You mentioned your new album, ‘The Industrialist’, I
managed to get hold of it, unfortunately it’s not available here on iTunes, I
haven’t checked in stores, it’s a pretty stomping album, tell me it’s been
getting good reviews..
Well, it’s definitely been getting good reviews of course
but every record you put out, this goes for every artist, there’s always gonna
be people who love it and people who don’t love it, that’s just how it is,
you’re not gonna make everybody happy. But besides that, we’ve been having an
amazing response, the album is doing well, it’s doing well all across the
world. I know it’s in Australia itunes, I know NZ’s completely different but I
know it’s on Australia Itunes, I’ll look into that, I’ll ask my manager why
it’s not available there.
You’ve got Rhy’s Fulber helping you out, I ask because
you’ve got a bit of that experimental thing going on but on the track “God
Eater” I think I heard a some dubstep type samples used in there?
Yeah, ‘God Eater’ was one of those songs that we just, it
was kind of like a throw back to when we first started- even before “Soul of a
new Machine” me and Burton were writing a lot of songs, in our bedroom, we used
to share a one bedroom apartment on Hollywood boulevard and we would write
songs on a little eight track recorder. That song [God Eater] kind of reminds
us of when we first started.
Was the rest of the album put together in a similar way-
just you and Burton working on it?
Yeah, that’s kind of the approach was for this one. Gene was busy doing
other stuff, we didn’t have a drummer and we didn’t really have time to find
another drummer, there was a lot of pressure to get this record done, of course
record labels always want it at a certain time. So we decided to recruit one of
our really good friends, his name is John Sankey, he is from Brisbane,
Australia and we decided to use him- he’s a drummer in a band called ‘Devolved’
and he helped us programme a lot of the beats on the computer. So, that’s
pretty much how we wrote the record.
Being from New Zealand, land mass the size of Britian but
a hundredth the population and [in comparison] the States being incomprehensible to me.
If you had a good show and were so inclined are the states an inexhaustible
tour market?
It’s still a killer tour market for us. Other parts of
the world are obviously bigger, like South America and parts of Europe and
certain places like that. But America’s a great place for us to tour that’s why
we spend a lot of time here. Plus there’s so many places to play, we got fifty
states to choose from ad some of these cities have five different venues for
you to choose from to play at.
Parting comments:
There’s no way I’m gonna miss out on your show here at
the Powerstation. The first time I saw you was about ten years ago at the same
place.
[laughs] yeah, there is a place to play?
It’s gonna be an awesome show, a massive turnout and I
hope you enjoy it as much as we do and thanks for talking to me.
We’re going to have a great time, can’t wait to go there
and play. I’ll see you guys soon..
