Fear Factory End Hiatus

What is it with bands from the '90s getting back together? Fear Factory are the latest band to announce they've reunited and are working on the follow-up to 2005's Transgression.

"I wouldn't say this is a reunion or a reformation," singer Burton C. Bell told Metal Hammer magazine. "It's more of a reorganization."

That sounds awfully like something Scott Stapp would say, don't you think?

"Fear Factory has been rolling around even though we haven't been chugging out records," Bell continued. "The last one was four years ago, but it's just in a state of reorganization now."

The band's lineup currently consists of singer Burton C. Bell, guitarist Dino Cazares, bassist Byron Stroud and former Death drummer Gene Hoglan. Yes, you read that right. Cazares is back in the band.

Cazares left Fear Factory in 2002 after the band temporarily split and started working more with Brujeria, the Fear Factory death metal side project he formed in 1989. Fear Factory reformed that same year without Cazares and moved bassist Christian Olde Wolbers to guitar to replace him.

Cazares and Bell later reconciled at a Ministry show in Los Angeles "and we just started talking again," Bell told the magazine.

"It was like, 'I don't remember what it was all about!' It's like, good friendships will always return, basically."

Fear Factory will record a new album and tour sometime this year. Nothing's been announced yet, but Cazares told Metal Hammer the band will play festivals in Europe, including Sonisphere and Bloodstock.

As for the album, it should be typically apocalyptic.

"You know, there's a lot more to the future than just machines, and right now it's just...the world's kind of messed up and there's a lot of material out there for me to write about," Bell told Metal Hammer.

"We're on the verge of apocalypse, it seems to me, in a lot of ways, socially and technologically, mechanically. It's all coming full circle so there's plenty of material I can choose from and write some interesting lyrics."

Fear Factory have been on hiatus for the last little while because Bell formed a new band called Ascension Of The Watchers and he toured with Ministry as a back-up vocalist last year. Olde Wolbers and now ex-drummer Raymond Herrera also formed a group called Arkaea with Pat Kavanagh of Threat Signal.

In the meantime, Divine Heresy, Cazares' post-Fear Factory band, will release their sophomore album, Bringer Of Plagues, on July 28 through Century Media. Arkaea's Years Of Darkness debut is out two weeks earlier through E1.