Former Fear Factory frontman Burton C. Bell has a strict personal rule regarding the band’s most recent release, 2021’s Aggression Continuum: he will not autograph it for fans.
During a recent appearance on the “Scandalous” podcast, the singer spoke candidly about his feelings toward the Nuclear Blast Records LP. The album features his vocals alongside guitarist Dino Cazares and drummer Mike Heller, but the timeline of its creation is exactly why Bell feels so disconnected from the final product.
He explained that the core of the album was actually completed years before he officially exited the band, originally carrying a completely different name.
“We finished that record in 2017 and it was titled Monolith,” Bell said. “So to me that was the last record, Monolith. To me it was the tombstone and Monolith was the epitaph.”
When asked if it bothered him that Fear Factory pushed forward and released Aggression Continuum with his vocals nearly a year after his departure, Bell clarified that his frustration stems entirely from the post-production changes made without his involvement:
“No, I didn’t feel that way. But I was really disappointed that they changed everything. They kept my vocals. I mean, the album was done in 2017. It was mixed, mastered. It had an album cover, had a title, and then after three years, I departed and s**t happened. They went and changed everything. So, that’s the one record I won’t sign.”
This latest interview aligns perfectly with statements Bell made back in April 2022 on “The Ex-Man” podcast with Doc Coyle. During that earlier conversation, the vocalist expressed similar apathy toward the album’s eventual release, noting how much time had passed since he actually worked on it:
“I was just happy that record finally came out. We finished that record in 2017. By the time it came out, I’d forgotten all about it. ‘Oh, yeah, I remember that song. Oh yeah.'”
While he acknowledged that there were solid moments on the tracklist—specifically highlighting “Collapse” and the original title track “Monolith”—he was visibly hesitant to praise the final mix. When Coyle complimented the album’s sound, Bell reluctantly replied:
“I guess,” he said. “When I finished the record [in 2017], the record was done and agreed upon and then further work was done without my say.”
Later in that same interview, Burton opened up about the emotional toll of leaving Fear Factory after decades of internal conflict, lawsuits, and legal battles over trademarks. Despite the heavy losses, he found a sense of peace in walking away.
“Stepping away from Fear Factory was not an easy decision by [any] means,” he said. “But what I experienced for the 10 years before that, the lawsuits, the acrimony, that was the one that killed me. And I just had to step away to realize, you know, they can take all this stuff from me — they can take the money, they can take the royalties, they can take the trademark away from me — and I realized that didn’t define me. They can take that, but I’m still Burton C. Bell, motherf**ker, and whatever I have they can’t take. So I’m just kind of moving forward and doing new things.”
Looking back on his career, the frontman acknowledged that industry hardships are something he prepared himself for long ago. He prefers to focus on the massive musical legacy he helped build rather than the bitterness of how it ended.
“I knew a long time ago I wanted to be an artist — way before I was in Fear Factory,” he said. “When I was in high school, I was, like, ‘I wanna be an artist.’ To be an artist, you’ve gotta suffer. You’ve gotta understand that people wanna take from you the entire time — what you create they wanna make money off of and take it away from you and just give you a pittance. But being bitter is not my style — never has been.”
“Whatever negativity has happened in the past with Fear Factory doesn’t even hold up to the amount of positivity that has happened,” he continued. “If you think about the negative, it can weigh you down so much, but it’s not really that much in comparison to what the band achieved, what we created, what we provided to the music world, and for that I’m proud and very happy.”
“No one likes to talk to a bitter person at all,” Burton concluded. “Me for one. It’s, like, ‘Man, just get over it and just move on.’ ‘Cause holding on to the past doesn’t serve me anything, it doesn’t serve anybody else anything. Move on and show ’em what you can do from that point forward.”
