Vintage Fear Factory with the old "promo pic in an abandoned factory" gambit.
The classic We Have A Technical format gets a nostalgic twist, as we’re each picking gateway records which helped usher them into darker music…even if Fear Factory’s Demanufacture and The Tea Party’s Splendor Solis had more in common with metal and blues-rock. How do these tentative first steps into industrial and goth rock hold up more than two decades on? Find out, plus get the latest on live show announcements! Also, is one of our favourite out of print records getting a supplemental release of outtakes which could possibly upend our understanding of 90s European electro-industrial? All that and plenty more on this week’s episode of the I Die: You Die podcast! You can rate and subscribe on iTunes, Google Play Music, download directly or stream from the widget down below.
Harsh words for poor old Windsor!
More substantively, looking back on things, my “gateway” record might have been David Bowie’s “Outside.”
Great episode. I agree falling into the clutches of both tea party and fear factory as gateway bands. Transmission being the first tea party i stumbled on. But predating both of those i believe my first gateway album/band was in fact 1993’s Bloody Kisses by Type O Negative. This really was my first insight to such bizarre sounds, mechanized grinding, brooding blackness (i didn’t even know what goth was at that age) doom atmosphere and a touch over the top. This one still sticks with me even though it’s not really of our thing at all.
Yeah, Type 0 (along with Rammstein) are one of the “ur” sources for gateway aesthetics into our thing. We talked about it a bit on this episode: https://idieyoudie.com/2016/09/we-have-a-technical-120-its-steve-lombardi/
Ummmmmm im embarassed i missed this! Holy crap, thanks for the heads up alex!
My “gateway” was what CFNY 102.1 out of T.O. used to be… a time when I remember driving home from uni listening to Candle by Puppy on a new music segment at 3 in the afternoon. They used to broadcast “alternative” nights from clubs that included everything from britpop to ska to punk to electronica to industrial to grunge, etc. from 9-2 every Fri & Sat and I attended many of them. Also, my favourite club Gord’s Place in St. Catharines, Ont. (now repurposed) used to model itself on the CFNY model. That’s how I was introduced to all manner of alternative music and they would play Nitzer Ebb and 242 as readily as they played Blur and Prodigy. It’s the mix of quite disparate genres that got me into a variety of music and it’s lasted to this day. Now 102.1 is absolute shite, but back then it was a major radio station that gave love to what we call “our thing”.
As for a gateway band/album, it was NIN Pretty Hate Machine, as I’m sure it was for many.
Well it’s not exactly true that metal bands later in the 90s have left the FF approach behind. Fear Factory are one of those bands (other would be, for instance, Meshuggah) that helped to find this new vision, new elements and sounds, this kind of tight, precise, well-produced, complex heavy music, that doesn’t hesitate using electronics and cinematic sounds, very unlike the 80s metal. It helped to get metal out of decline in the beginning of 90s. Yes, other didn’t copy them but definitly used their findings. I would say, the most well known FF followers must be early Strapping Young Lad (Devin confirmed it himself), the bands like Red Harvest (highly recommended!), Mnemic, Dagoba, some less known like Sybreed and Kryoburn. And of course some nu-metal such as Spineshank, Crossbreed and even Static-X obviously have a FF influence. And some big metal bands also started using these sounds (double kicks, triggers, etc.) and production approach, listen to Dimmu Borgir, In Flames or Soilwork of the early 00s…