Fear Factory

Fear Factory plays industrial metal built on mechanical precision: palm-muted guitar figures locked to double-kick drumming with the exactness of machinery, and vocals that alternate between a percussive bark and clean melodic choruses. Electronics and samples run through all of it, treated as part of the rhythm section rather than as decoration laid on top.

The catalogue runs to ten studio albums and moves from the death-metal and grindcore roots of the debut towards a groove-driven, riff-based machine sound. The themes stay consistent across it — automation, surveillance, the human being displaced by the system it built — and the records are put together to sound engineered rather than played, the guitars cut into short repeated blocks and the drums locked to them. A Gary Numan cover on one of the early records became an unlikely rock-radio hit.

The band emerged in the early 1990s and released its debut in 1992. Founding guitarist Dino Cazares is the sole remaining original member and the band's songwriter and leader. The original vocalist left and the group has continued under Cazares with a different singer, so what takes the stage is a continuation of the band rather than its founding lineup. The mid- and late-1990s albums remain the touchstones for the style.

Live, the show is relentless and exact rather than loose. The appeal is hearing material this mechanical executed at speed by people, with the programmed elements and the playing locked tight enough that the seam is hard to find. It is heavy in a percussive, physical way, and the clean choruses supply the few moments of air.

It suits listeners who want metal with the precision of machinery and none of the sprawl, and anyone who likes riffs that land like pistons.