Dino Cazares says Milo Silvestro shines on “Roboticist“, Fear Factory‘s first new song with him.
Dino Cazares has talked up what Milo Silvestro brings to “Roboticist“, out tomorrow, and addressed head-on the criticism that has followed the singer since he took the job three and a half years ago. Speaking to Poland’s “Strefa Music Art“, the Fear Factory guitarist said the release marks a clean break.
“Of course. It’s a whole new era for Fear Factory, and we’ve been promoting it that way live. ‘Cause as of right now, we’ve only been playing all the back catalog of Fear Factory, and people seem to love it. And one of the first things that Milo says is, ‘Welcome to the new era of Fear Factory.’ That’s exactly what it is. And so now, with the new song coming out, people are gonna be able to hear what that sounds like,” he said (as transcribed by Blabbermouth).
Regarding what convinced him Silvestro was right for the job, Cazares did not dodge the charge that the singer is too close a match to Burton C. Bell.
“Well, I didn’t realize instantly. But I was very attracted to the way he sang and the way he sounded like what Fear Factory fans know what the vocalist should sound like. Of course, people say, ‘Oh, you replaced him ’cause he’s a replica,’ and, yeah, definitely. Because that’s how the songs were made, that’s how the songs were sung, and that’s the tone of the vocals. And so Milo had it nailed down. And, obviously, we were one of his favorite bands. We’re pretty much in the top five. And he knew the band. He knew what effects [original Fear Factory singer] Burton [C. Bell] used. He was definitely a fan of Burton and he definitely knew his technique on how he created tones, and he fit right in. So, right when I saw his video, I was, like, ‘Wow, this kid sounds just like him.’ And some people complain that he sounds too much like him, but if he sounded not like him, then people would be, like, ‘Well, it doesn’t sound like Fear Factory.’ So it’s, like, you can’t win or lose with it, so I ended deciding to go with what fit best for the sound that we were trying to go for. So it’s a very familiar sound, tone, technique that people are used to. So when people go and see the songs live, if they close their eyes, it sounds exactly the same. So that’s exactly what we were going for,” he explained.
He said the record allows more room than the live shows have: “On the new record, there’s definitely still a lot of those same elements, but Milo definitely has some of his own style that shows on the new record. I can’t wait for people to hear it.”
Producer Damien Rainaud, who has worked with the band since 2012’s The Industrialist, pushed for it. “Whatever vocalist I’m working with, I would try to push them and try to get the best performance out of them as well,” Cazares said. “We had a producer, a guy named Damien Rainaud, and he’s very much the same way. When he produced Milo‘s vocals, he tried to get the best performance. He tried to get the passion out of Milo, and that’s exactly what happens when you’re doing the recording process, or you want that to happen. And I think Milo shines on this new record, and you’re gonna hear it on the first song coming up August 29th.”
“Roboticist” takes the perspective of the person doing the building rather than the machine.
“Basically, what that is about is about the actual roboticist, the person that makes them. We call it the architect of the artificial. He’s building machines to outlast the flesh,” he explained.
Cazares placed it in a line running back to the band’s first album.
He said: “Well, no, because we’ve been singing about it forever, and people have been talking about it forever, for a long time. And that was the whole concept of the band name, Fear Factory. Anything that manufactures fear. And going back to our first record, Soul Of A New Machine, that was the birth of the band, it was the birth of the concept, it was the birth of the story. And, of course, Demanufacture and Obsolete — Obsolete is where we were predicting the future of how not only us humans as being replaced by automatons, but we were kind of talking about how certain things were gonna be replaced, certain jobs, certain manual labors, digital formats of how we stream music and even radio, a lot of radio stations got rid of DJs, and they got digital programming, stuff like that. We were talking about the modern changes that were happening at that time in 1998, and, of course, also talking about where we see man as becoming obsolete. We just told our version of the story of stuff that we’ve picked up on, reading certain books and watching certain movies. Obviously, movies like ‘Terminator‘ and ‘Blade Runner‘ with replicants, ‘Terminator‘, where the machines are getting rid of humanity, things like that. We just sang our version of the story. And we continue that type of concept, of course, into Fear Factory and into the song ‘Robotocist‘. Now, ‘Robotocist‘, the song deals with the creator of how this robotic A.I. is gonna replace humanity. So, yeah, this is our version of the story, but we talk about the creator, the guy who created it.”
Cazares was unsentimental about the technology itself.
“The future of computing and all that stuff and A.I., that goes all the way back to the ’50s. A.I. has existed for many, many years, but now it’s just obviously become involved in everything that we use.”
He continued: “There are a lot of people who complain about A.I., but the only way they’re gonna get away from not using A.I. is to get rid of all their electronic devices and basically live in a mountain in a cave or something. You have to live off the grid if you don’t wanna use A.I., because it’s in every aspect of our life and in every app. And it’s in the algorithms, it’s everywhere, so there’s absolutely no escaping it. So you just kind of have to adapt to it.”
Asked whether it makes writing easier, he drew a distinction between recording tools and composition.
He replied: “Yes, it could if you decide to use it that way. But that’s not the way that we’ve used it at all. We didn’t use it for any music at all whatsoever. We still do it the way we’ve been using it. But you gotta understand, the recording devices that we use, it’s in the software. It’s in Logic Pro. It’s in Pro Tools. It’s all built into the algorithm, and there’s no way escaping it. We use it as a tool for recording, but we didn’t use it as a tool for writing.”
The subject has already caused the band a problem this month. A teaser image posted to their X account on 11 August carried the platform’s automatic “Made with AI” label. When followers raised it, the band replied that it had always been there. Cazares‘ comments here concern the music rather than the artwork, and neither he nor the band has said anything further about the image.
The album is a group effort beyond the four names on the marquee. Ricky Bonazza, who covers bass when Tony Campos is out with Static-X, contributed programming, arrangements, vocals and lyrics. Silvestro wrote a substantial share of the lyrics and the album’s closing track.
“Roboticist” arrives tomorrow, the same day the band open their “Cybernetic Domination” European tour in Poznań with Crystal Lake, Hate and The Nocturnal Affair. That run finishes on 10 October in London.
