Genre : Industrial Metal, Metal
Label : Nuclear Blast
Origin : United States
Rating : 9 / 10
Buy it now
Following 2012's "The Industrialist", - see review, IF - Fear Factory returns with a full length that showcases new found commitment towards the hallmark musical style that already have been visited - arguably: created - by the band throughout their memorable "Mechanize" outing, back in 2010.
In retrospect, it seems as if "The Industrialist" album has sought to represent the highly relative calm before the storm that is about to be finally unleashed with this fresh effort, as 2015's "Genexus" is a radically aggressive audio tour right out the box, streamlined and scientifically hyper-optimized to induce instant effects of inescapable cyberpsychosis, as was/is the case with "Mechanize", as well.
You are dehumanized.
Read on to know more.
From a production standpoint, Genexus is a fantastically engineered disk that aims to render the timeless power of the monolithic guitar chug with microscopic accuracy and precision. The entire disk is an awesome tribute to the virtually infinite potentialities inherent to the chug, now taken to extremes that start to sound like the rumbling of sentient machines filled with malicious intents to rip consecutive configurations of redundant flesh apart without any concept of a warning offered.
Not surprisingly, the guitars on the disc show their primal interest in offering minigun-like rhythm patterns with keen sense of variation exhibited in the context of how to compliment intensity a myriad ways without sacrificing aggression, and also with clear separation maintained between two adjacent chugs, - hence the CyRambo effect. The sonic space occupied by these monolithic minigun guitars is a masterfully established compromise between maximum obtainable levels of aggression and rigorous discipline to keep all sounds in the vicinity intact and immaculate. Not a SINGLE instance of unsupervised bleedthrough is observable on this disc, and this is why I consider the release to be a masterful work, from a production standpoint.
The idea of melody is not at all absent from the effort: first and foremost, the rumbling guitars necessarily occupy a clearly defined sonic domain at all times during the transmissions, and their respective-, present situation, along with the rhythmic code that a given pattern expresses itself on, is an immediately intriguing combination that keeps the disc in a titanium form all the way throughout at face value. But the creators of the album exhibit a clear understanding of how it is mandatory to command the onslaught to a relative halt, from time to time.
As such, it gets even funnier: the band members have decided to counterpoint the dehumanized levels of cybernetic ultra-violence with melodic hooks that bring to mind - no joke - a steroid-Pet Shop Boys and A-ha, coated nicely into the synth-pop sensibilities of the '80s. Do not bury an exquisite promise of a perfectly proper cyberpsychosis into rejection, nor into oblivion yet: the framework that "sells" these melodic hooks, remains unaltered, and they all are delivered with the same configuration of instruments, in the "spirit" - haha - of good old cyberpsychosis. But the frontman switches into a casual kind of fervent mid-range clean singing during these parts, giving you these overdosed synthpop-vibes, each registering on various territories of the scale of assumable convince power.
There are extremely clever and efficient melodic hooks on the disc, I particularly like that of "Anodized", or, one could easily the listener to "Soul Hacker", which is a masterfully crafted track that remains faithful to the ethos of cybernetics, while managing to come across as a very easily accessible song, pulling these feats out without letting the grit/relentlessness suffer in the process. "Protomech" is awesome, too: "take everything away from me, replace my skin with circuitry" - quintessential, yet playful precision. I can't really pick a single melodic hook which I would consider outright lame, - "Dielectric"'s hook is KINNA (t)(l)ame, but funny, in my opinion - but there is a definite, sassy dance that is observable, through which the singer gauges your suspected tolerance levels towards casually prolonged sung lines of a seemingly contemplative, melancholic narrative tint. Courtesy of the hooks and rhythmic/tonal variation, the band is apt at delivering a twist of form or a twist in configuration of intensity that saves all builds even from the mere sub-optimum prospects of monotony. None to be found. On the other chrome hand, this ability to surprise-, and, to interrupt expectations, is highly likable, even if done in the context of taking creative risks that may break a rabid torrent of fragments of iron.
As noted though, the premiere name of the game herein is the monolithic guitar work, and the exquisitely maintained and executed care to keep all factorials of the music in their respective-, top notch shape of maximum efficiency, without interfering with their surroundings in sub-optimal ways. To be fair, it needs to be said that the melodic hooks might very well turn out to be awesome once you have let them grow on you a bit, because, frankly, all good music demands to be listened to, and we are yet to SEE outright irredeemable music. Forget about hearing. (-., Ludwig.)
Rating : 9 / 10
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