The Strange Progression Of Time And Tech

The Music converses with Fear Factory's affable axeman Dino Cazares shortly before his US tour performing 1995's landmark Demanufacture in its entirety (note — they won't do the same during their upcoming Australian run). Having already aired the full LP on recent anniversary jaunts, does he perceive nostalgia in metal to be more potent than ever? "Yeah, I believe there's a new generation of kids that are going back and discovering all the old bands. The people who have grown up with all this, who have grown up with Demanufacture, they were probably in high school when it came out. They probably grew up, maybe got out of music, maybe had kids.

"I also think there's a new generation of kids who are going back, on the internet, and they're discovering all those old bands that maybe their parents used to like, and they're getting into that."

"Then suddenly they hear Fear Factory's doing a Demanufacture tour, they want to relive their youth. They want to come back and check out the show, like how they did when they were in high school. I also think there's a new generation of kids who are going back, on the internet, and they're discovering all those old bands that maybe their parents used to like, and they're getting into that."

Although Cazares maintains the metal act also dissect topics such as religion and conspiracy theories, one of Demanufacture's motifs, namely the man-versus-machine conflict oft-inpired by the Terminator film franchise, has been a recurring theme during their career. "Technology, the way it's evolving and way it plays a role in our life, there's so much more to talk about. Just as much as a Satanic band can sing so much about Satan," the riff-meister laughs. "There's always going to be a war between good and evil."

Eerily, latest record Genexus' release closely followed that of Terminator: Genisys. "It was complete coincidence. But we went, 'What? Wow, we're kinda on point with that movie in a way,'" the guitarist explains of similar titles and street dates. "I thought [Genisys] was okay. Conceptually I liked it a lot, with the singularity processes... I believe who they picked to play Sarah Connor wasn't that great. It seemed it was like, just bad acting and a lower budget Terminator."

One offshoot of technology's progression that irritates the outspoken mainstay is clickbait. During an appearance on Jamey Jasta's podcast last year, Cazares referenced Korn, Meshuggah and Coal Chamber utilising riffs heavily inspired by Fear Factory. Numerous metal webzines ran the story; one later issued a correction for an attention-grabbing, but misleading headline.

"It's something that we all as musicians have to deal with. 'Dino takes a shit today' — boom, it's going to go everywhere instantly. Sometimes you may say something that people don't like, or people may twist your words around... People want to use it to try and help promote their website. If they have a hot subject, 'Dino says something,' or 'Phil Anselmo says something' and all of a sudden they get a million hits, they're going to be able to make some more money by selling ad space. As a musician, you say something, then the website twists your words around and puts this very attractive headline that people want to click onto and read. Some people don't even read the story, they just read the headline and never really get a full picture of what's up. It's annoying, but you've got to deal with it."