The voice that defined futuristic anxiety, existential desperation, and steadfast resistance returns.
Extreme music pioneer, multimedia talent, and iconoclastic provocateur Burton C. Bell resurrects his legacy and forward-thinking destiny, remade in a career-spanning incarnation as a singular solo artist.
His work continually explores themes of dystopian angst, identity, technology gone wrong, and resilience. "Anti-Droid," Burton C. Bell's debut solo single, arrives with a potent message. "I severed the machine that no longer served me," he screams in the moody, synth-heavy, sci-fi metal missive. It's a defiant statement delivered with a confident bombast. Burton C. Bell is back on the offensive.
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"I'm starting my solo career," Bell says enthusiastically. "I'm working with different producers and co-songwriters, making music that I love, with full control of the music and creative direction."
Bell's discography includes multiple live and recorded collaborations with Black Sabbath icon Geezer Butler and Journey's Deen Castronovo (as GZR); industrial maverick Al Jourgensen and Ministry; and guest vocal appearances with Pitchshifter, Conflict, Soil, Static-X, Soulfly, and Delain, among others. He's the vocalist of Ascension Of The Watchers and City Of Fire and, of course, the co-creator of Fear Factory and the only musician to appear on every Fear Factory release from 1992 through 2024.
"Fear Factory ushered in an entirely new strand of metal when they emerged from the sweatboxes of L.A. in the early '90s," Metal Hammer wrote. "Demanufacture was so innovative that it sounds as fresh today as it did then; a blistering collision of metal and hardcore that easily rivals any of its peers. In short, a masterpiece," wrote Kerrang! in an anniversary retrospective. It's a Decibel Magazine Hall Of Fame album, alongside classic records by Scorpions, Judas Priest, Slayer, Anthrax, and Emperor.
Fear Factory created a sound that revolutionized extreme metal, defined in no small part by Bell's innovative scream/sing dichotomy and the influences he brought from post-punk and industrial. Songs like "Replica," "Linchpin," "Edgecrusher," "Fear Campaign," "Archetype," "Cyber Waste," and "Zero Signal" are modern metal anthems. Demanufacture (1995) and the RIAA gold-certified Obsolete (1998) are genre-redefining works heralded by fans and critics as essential albums. Orwell, Bradbury, Blade Runner, and sophisticated sci-fi and fantasy works fed Bell's lyrics and concepts.
The band toured the world with Metallica, Slipknot, Korn, Megadeth, and Ozzy Osbourne, taking bands like System Of A Down and Static-X out as support acts in their early stages. After years of behind-the-scenes band member turmoil and legal issues, Bell left Fear Factory in the fall of 2020.
In the chorus of "Anti-Droid," he declares: "I'd rather be dead than a slave to the factory."
PHOTO CREDIT: Erica Vincent
Bell says "Anti-Droid" is "a statement about breaking free. Breaking the bonds of what I felt was a prison in many ways. Not just financially or contractually but creatively, as well. I felt constrained to this format we'd written ourselves into. The 'factory' doesn’t have a capital F. It's the factory of the music industry, a certain form of business, and priorities. Being a slave to an established way of thinking is not really freedom. I am moving forward."
Like the faithful cover of Rammstein's "Du Hast" he released in 2023, or the cover of "Enter Sandman" recorded with Danzig's John Christ and Metallica's Robert Trujillo more than a decade before, Bell's solo work embodies the best of hard rock, metal, and industrial's past, present, and future. "Anti-Droid" is but the opening salvo in a brand-new campaign, which will see Burton C. Bell releasing increasingly innovative yet classic feeling, ever-engaging solo material. It also sets the stage for future live performances, certain to deliver the anthems that have defined his body of work, songs rarely played from City Of Fire and G/Z/R, and diverse deep cuts from the Fear Factory catalog.
"Never be destroyed by your own creation."