BLABBERMOUTH.NET
FEAR FACTORY will release its first new song in over five years,
"Disruptor", on Friday, April 16. The track will appear on the band's upcoming album,
"Aggression Continuum", due later in the year via
Nuclear Blast Records.
A short riff teaser from the new
FEAR FACTORY LP, courtesy of the band's guitarist
Dino Cazares, is available below.
Last September, singer
Burton C. Bell issued a statement officially announcing his departure from
FEAR FACTORY, saying that he "cannot align" himself with someone whom he does not trust or respect.
Bell's exit from
FEAR FACTORY came more than two weeks after
Cazares launched a
GoFundMe campaign to assist him with the production costs associated with the release of
FEAR FACTORY's long-awaited new LP.
Bell later told
Kerrang! magazine that his split with
FEAR FACTORY was a long time coming. "It's been on my mind for a while," he said. "These lawsuits [over the rights to the
FEAR FACTORY name] just drained me. The egos. The greed. Not just from bandmembers, but from the attorneys involved. I just lost my love for it.
"With
FEAR FACTORY, it's just constantly been, like, 'What?!' You can only take so much. I felt like 30 years was a good run. Those albums I've done with
FEAR FACTORY will always be out there. I'll always be part of that. I just felt like it was time to move forward."
Pressed about whether there is any chance of a reconciliation with
FEAR FACTORY down the line,
Burton said: "I'm done. I haven't spoken to
Dino in three years. I haven't spoken to
Raymond [
Herrera, drums] and
Christian [
Olde Wolbers, bass] in longer than that, and I have no intention to. I'm just moving forward with my life."
In October,
Dino issued a statement in which he said that the door for
Burton to come back to
FEAR FACTORY wouldn't "stay open forever." The guitarist also revealed that
Burton "lost his legal rights" to the
FEAR FACTORY name "after a long court battle" with
Herrera and
Olde Wolbers. "I had the opportunity to do something right, and I felt that obtaining the name in full was the right thing to do for the both of us, so after nearly four years we can continue as
FEAR FACTORY, to make more records and to tour," he said. "That is why it is sad to hear that he decided to quit and, in my opinion, for whatever issues he has it seems like it could've been worked out."
In explaining his reasons for starting a fundraising campaign,
Cazares said that all donations will go toward covering newly incurred production costs involved with the making of the new
FEAR FACTORY LP, including re-recording the drums, guitars, bass and keyboards, as well as mixing and mastering by
Andy Sneap.
Burton's original lead vocals, which were recorded in full in 2017, will remain on the new version of the album.
FEAR FACTORY's fundraising campaign marked the first public activity from the band since it completed a 2016 U.S. headlining tour on which it performed its classic second album,
"Demanufacture", in its entirety.
Bell's
ASCENSION OF THE WATCHERS project released its second full-length album,
"Apocrypha", last October via
Dissonance Productions.