Hailing from Los Angeles, Ca., Fear Factory has been a staple in metal circles since the 1990s, touring with bands like Slayer, Rammstein, Strapping Young Lad and Black Sabbath. Their debut album, "Soul of a New Machine" was released in 1992, and the band recently released a "Best of Fear Factory" compilation. The group is currently on the road with Hypocrisy, Decapitated and Suffocation on the Machines At War Tour. Drummer Raymond Herrera was able to take a break from his busy touring schedule to answer some questions for The Daily about the band.
The Tufts Daily: Could you give a little bit of background about your band, such as its origins and your role in the group? Much of the Tufts crowd tends to be more of the Coldplay/John Mayer/Death Cab for Cutie ilk.
Ray Herrera: Yeah, we started the band in October of 1990. The band was started by myself and Dino [Cazares] who was the original guitar player, and it didn't really become Fear Factory until our singer Burt [Bell] came into the band, before that it was just a guitar player and drummer just jamming on stuff ... And we've been putting records out ever since.
TD: You are currently headlining the Machines At War Tour with Hypocrisy, Decapitated and Suffocation. These are some of the heaviest, darkest bands that you guys have toured with. This definitely seems like a move towards the death and thrash metal side of things, as opposed to the industrial metal category that Fear Factory is sometimes placed into.
RH: Yeah, definitely. We wanted to do a tour that was a lot heavier, kind of back to the roots, because that was essentially where the band came from. So we started talking to Nuclear Blast [a metal record label] to check and see what bands were available at that time, and sure enough we were able to put this package together, but yeah, it's a really heavy tour. I'm really excited about it.
We've gotten so many different types of metal fans over the years that I think people are sort of used to seeing us do something different every once in a while, and doing a tour this heavy is definitely one of those things. Last year we took Strapping Young Lad and Soilwork with us, and that was a pretty heavy tour, but this tour is even heavier than that.
TD: Looking at the titles of a lot of Fear Factory's songs and albums, there seems to be this recurring theme about the interaction between man and machine. What kind of role does this play in your music as well as how the group's personal interests relate to your songs' content?
RH: That whole thing was kind of a sci-fi thing that Burt came up with; he's the one that writes all the lyrics and comes up with the concepts and all of that. As far as our personal interests, I know we all kind of see signs of that interaction. People can't live without their computers, and it's that whole melding between technology and us, and our reliance on it. Like I said, that's all Burt's doing though. But I think it fits the sound of the band because the music is very abrasive, almost technological, you know, it's very tight, very precise. It's almost inhuman, so it really kind of fits the whole man and machine concept.
TD: On that note, you have a pretty aggressive, technical, almost mechanically driven drum technique. Stylistically, what are some of your biggest influences as a drummer?
RH: Well growing up, it was mainly metal drummers that I really looked up to; like Dave Lombardo from Slayer was definitely one of my biggest influences. Or Pete Sandoval, who everybody knows from Morbid Angel but he used to play for a band called Terrorizer, and I really used to love that band. I used to watch them do backyard gigs when I was in junior high. [I also admire] Gene Hoglan, who at the time was playing for Dark Angel. Those were the three guys who I really looked up to.
The whole idea with the sound of the drums with, was probably more from the electronica music that I used to listen to, stuff like Depeche Mode or New Order where the music was all drum machine. I kind of wanted to meld the sound of that with real drums, and that's when I started messing around with [drum] triggers and so on.
TD: What's the funniest thing that's ever happened during a show?
RH: We've had guys run across the stage naked [laughs]. I don't know if that would be funny or disturbing. I don't know ... we've had a couple girls run topless across the stage. That's about it.
TD: Craziest tour story?
RH: We did have one bus driver who wasn't very safe to say the least, and essentially rather than pulling off the road we were pretty much stuck on the freeway late at night in Europe in the snow, where it was around a bend so other busses didn't have time to move out of the way to avoid hitting us.
TD: Do you have any parting messages for our readers, or any projects you want to plug?
RH: Well, we're on tour 'til Dec. 10, and we're working on a remix record to release maybe at the end of the summer, and we're also working on a new record to release sometimes next year. So check it out.
