FEAR FACTORY — Obsolete (review)

Album · 1998 · Industrial Metal

4/5 · 2023-05-09
UMUR

"Obsolete" is the third full-length studio album by US death/groove/industrial metal act Fear Factory. The album was released in July 1998 through Roadrunner Records. It´s the successor to "Demanufacture" (June 1995, Roadrunner Records) and features the exact same quartet lineup who recorded the predecessor. The original album contains 10 tracks while the limited edition digi-pack features 5 bonus tracks. "Obsolete" has sold enough copies to be certified gold, which is actually quite the achivement for an album this extreme. But it says a lot about how popular Fear Factory were in those years.

The music is a combination of futuristic death metal, industrial metal, and alternative/groove-metal. There´s actually an organic edge to the sound on the album that was definitely not present on "Demanufacture", but the music is still quite mechanical and sharp in execution. We´re still treated to triggered artificial sounding bass drums and a polished futuristic production, so the word organic shouldn´t be misinterpreted here.

The lyrics on the album features a sci-fi concept story about the Edgecrusher and his struggles for freedom in a totalitarian machine dominated world sometime in the future (2076 A.D to be exact). It´s like reading a Philip K. Dick novel or watching a Terminator movie. In addition to the lyrics there are explanations to each song, which is a really great help if you want to understand and follow the story. So there´s a bleak and sinister sci-fi atmoshere on the album and the music follows suit. Not that "Obsolete" is the darkest album that I´ve ever heard, but the point is that the lyrics and the music suit each other well.

"Obsolete" features an increased use of alternative and groove based heavy riffing which are added to Fear Factory´s industrialized death metal style. I´m sure the most old school deathgrind fans, already jumped ship on "Demanufacture", so this is just to say that "Obsolete" travels further down the more groove oriented riff and rhythm style initiated on the predecessor. Some of the highlights of the album are "Securitron (Police State 2000)" and "Descent" but all tracks are of a high quality and work well within the concept story of the album.

I´m not sure Burton C. Bell´s limited clean vocal range should have tried forces with the closing ballad track "Timelessness" though. He is way out of his league on that track and struggles to keep the pitch. His vocal performance on this album is otherwise decent enough. His skills may be limited (which at times limits the music itself), but at least he has a distinct souning voice and a singing style which he doesn´t deviate much from. His raw shouted vocals are pretty strong and when he performs harsher but still clean vocals like he does in "Descent", the outcome is much more successful than when he performs his more sterile cleans.

Upon conclusion "Obsolete" is a both well written, well performed, and well produced release, and it shows development from "Demanufacture", which means that it´s just not a clone of their past success. That´s always praise worthy when you release something on the heels of your commercial breakthrough release. Some artists fall into the trap thinking that their audience just wants version 2 of said release, and releasing a copy of a past success is almost always doomed to failure. Fear Factory steer clear of anything like that and while "Obsolete" isn´t as groundbreaking or as unique as "Demanufacture" is, it´s still a high quality release and a 3.5 - 4 star (75%) rating is deserved.