UNSW Roundhouse, Sydney
Friday July 5, 2013 :
17 years since fans tore a path of destruction through the UNSW campus after the Fear Factory show at the Roundhouse was cancelled, the band return (or at least half of it) to the same venue promising to do the same damage aurally in honour of their highly regarded Demanfacture album. Vocalist Burton C Bell and guitarist Dino Cazares have two new guys slotted into the line up with a new album recorded that was probably thankfully ignored tonight, stage theme and merch all celebrating the aforementioned album.
Twelve Foot Ninja open the night to a relatively sparse Roundhouse crowd and immediately divide opinion. Difficult to categorise (that’s not always a good thing), it’s a bit like Messhuggah getting accosted by gypsies, nu metal and a ska band. Somehow two seven string guitars fail to give much guitar presence to a bass heavy sound that runs the quiet/loud and stop/start dynamic into the ground. Look, there’s no doubting all musicians involved are amazingly talented and as a band they are tight and grooving but nothing about it touches me the right way, I’ve heard it all done better and with bigger balls by local boys, Cigars For The Man. They’ll probably be huge, they seem pretty professional, and I’ll never get it.
Fear Factory come on after an extended airing of the Terminator soundtrack and launch into opener, ‘ Demanufacture’, the band a little sloppy at the outset, with the familiar double kick work and guitar riffage not quite gelling immediately, though they would tighten up considerably as the set progressed. Bell’s roar and growl still packs a mighty wallop and he mostly gives the songs the emotional heft they deserve, though it’s unavoidable that his dark croon is considerably off in numerous notable parts. What I hadn’t remembered from the album was the crushing claustrophobic atmosphere in the wall to wall riffage and constant barrage of mechanised brutality. Here in the live setting it’s amplified by the intimacy of the Roundhouse and the band thrive on the energy. Countless classics are played, ‘Replica’ and ‘New Breed’ are received rapturously, and ‘Body Hammer’ levels the place with that unstoppable riff that has always conjured for me images of a mid 90’s WWF wrestler named Body Hammer coming out to ringside. Dino is high energy, the new guys perform admirably, particularly fill-in drummer Raymond Herrara’s large, lightning quick shoes with devastating bass drum playing.
The encore of a scattering of songs from their prime period records is also happily devoured, ‘Shock’ and ‘Edgecrusher’ are highlights, ‘Archetype’ also a pearler delivered with conviction. An admirable tribute is paid tonight to the band’s defining moment and their glory years at the commercial face of metal, and though it is incomplete without the full original line up playing, it’s still well worth the trolley assisted gymnastics to leave the UNSW grounds and the traffic chaos getting there in the first place.
Reviewer: Roger Killjoy
Photographer: David Youdell
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The reviewer said when the band came out they weren’t tight judging from this video he was clearly wrong