When I spoke to Raymond over a year ago and he told me the new CD was the heaviest material they’d recorded, I must admit I was extremely skeptical. The band had gone from the heavily Napalm Death influenced Soul Of A New Machine to the much less aggressive Demanufacture and I assumed the music would go even further into a softer approach. I was right and I was wrong. The music is not as heavy as the earliest material, however, it is much more varied and aggressive than Demanufacture The album contains a fair amount of thick, bass-heavy chugging with Raymond Herrerra’s typical triggered drumming along with Burton flexing his windpipes. Burton’s vocals are what stand out in my mind with his improving vocal range, going from deep Barney Greenway-esque booming grunts to his angry yells with sections of actual singing strewn in between. The album contains a lot of the electronic effects which have been a staple in their music once again expertly handled by Front Line Assembly/Delerium keyboardist Rhys Fulber. A few tracks on the album contain a much more mainstream sound, such as "Edgecrusher", which has a heavy rap rhythm and vocal patterns and contains the ‘technical scratching’ of DJ Zodak, "Descent" and "Timelessness", suprisingly one two the better tracks on the album, are rather mellow tunes which should receive a fair amount of radio play and "Resurrection" is a more upbeat dancy track. Fans of Fear Factory’s more aggressive music should be able to get into "Shock", "Securitron (Police State 2000)" and "Freedom Or Fire". The digi-pak version contains five bonus tracks. The first is a cover of Gary Numan’s hit "Cars", with Gary contributing vocals to the track. I’ve always hated Gary Numan, I’d rather listen to a dog screeching from being raped up the ass while running it’s claws down a chalkboard than sit through any of Numan’s material. Fear Factory then do an okay cover of Wiseblood’s "0-0 (Where Evil Dwells)", which is an aggressive grind track. Up next are two unreleased tracks "Soulwound" and "Messiah" from the Soul Of A New Machine recordings, both are heavy enough to make you wonder why they were excluded in the first place. Finishing out the CD is "Concreto", previously only available on the band’s Dog Day Sunrise single. I personally found the CD to be pretty good and listen to it from time to time. As long as you skip "Cars", you should find this to be a pretty decent release as well.

Written By: Teufel