Room Thirteen finds Fear Factory camped out in the Anson Rooms in Bristol where Christian Olde Wolbers takes the time to explain a bit about their latest record.
R13: So you've been touring since March for this record?
COW: We've been touring since this record came out [August 2005] so sometimes we have breaks on and off and I had to produce an album.
R13: Which has been your favourite gig on this tour so far?
COW: Probably one of the ones in Finland, the first maybe. But I think the best shows are still to come.
R13: How do you survive touring?
COW: I don't know if I am surviving. I got sick twice already, I'm sick again. I got all cut up, my foot twisted and I fell down the stairs the first week. You know, I'm not really in the best shape right now. It just takes a lot out of you, people think it's really luxurious but it's not luxurious at all.
R13: Which support acts have particularly impressed you?
COW: Well we had Strapping [Young Lad] on the last tour with us in the US. That was really cool. Hmmm let me see...the support bands I want to take are never available for a Fear Factory tour. But yeah, Strapping/Fear Factory tour was probably the coolest one.
R13: Are there any up and coming bands that you recommend?
COW: A band called Threat Signal they're from Hamilton, Canada and they're going to be on Nuclear Blast. They're awesome. I think, well as Byron said, they might be the next Trivium.
R13: On to the new album 'Transgression', what were the biggest changes on it since the last one?
COW: Well basically that we used someone completely different to produce and mix the album with a very small involvement from the band, which was very very different for us.
R13: Was it quite hard to stand back and let someone take over?
COW: Of course. Sometimes a change is good, then you can come back to what you're used to. When someone else handles your record it's always going to be very different but it was a change and I didn't think it came out as I expected or I wanted it to but then there's more promise for the next record.
R13: Is it true that you got guitar lessons from Phil Demmel from Machine Head?
COW: I wanted to do a lead solo for one of the songs or two songs I think. I'm not really a good lead player and I had five days to put this lead on the record so I wanted help from one of my friends, someone I looked up to from when I was kid; listening to Vio-lence and stuff like that, before Machine Head and Phil was like one of the guitar players I really liked and I called him up and he came and stayed at my house for two days. He worked out some solos and he just said you can learn them and put them on the record so I learnt them, but we only used little pieces of it.
R13: Ben Temple-Smith is personally one of my favourite comic artists. How did you get him to design the artwork for 'Transgression'?
COW: Burton got in touch with him as he knew him as a comic artist. So he approached him and Ben drew some stuff for Fear Factory and you know it all came together. It was actually a design for 'Archetype' but we still had the artwork so we used it for 'Transgression'.
R13: Which is your favourite track to play live?
COE: That's a difficult one. I don't really have a favourite one. There's always the ones that you get more reaction from than others but umm I don't know, people ask me that all the time. I get off more from the vibe of the whole show not really one song you know.
R13: If someone was looking to get into Fear Factory which track and album would you recommend?
COW: It kinda depends who that person is, you know. If it was just like a blind date and I had to give tham a song ummm from the new record I'd probably give them 'Contagion' or something.
R13: You are known to have quite a few side projects going, is KusH still on the cards?
COW: We having a hard time with clearing stuff from [Stephen] Carpenter [Deftones] because of his record label, so it's on a downer at the moment, plus everyone's making new records and we're touring, Deftones are touring and I've been producing other bands.
R13: Which bands are you working with?
COW: I was working with Threat Signal and when I get home I'm working with Mnemic from Denmark, recording them and then towards the end of the year before our fall tour I'm doing Bleed The Sky from Orange County.
R13: Why are you known as 'The EdgeKrusher'?
COW: It's just an alias. I do a lot of hip-hop stuff and studio work with different people. Only the people that know Fear Factory will know it's Fear Factory related. I kinda wanted to keep it as a total different identity. I do so much other work, I just want to confuse people - like does he do hip-hop stuff? People don't know that I work in a lot of studios and do pop music. If Kelly Clarkson called me up tomorrow to come play some guitar on her record I will, you know what I mean. To me music is music, I'll try any different food all over the world, music is like that too.
R13: You seem to be doing a hell of a lot at the moment?
COW: There will never be enough time to get your hands in every little thing but there are so many different opportunities and other projects and people wanting me to play wioth these people. At one point Ozzy asked me to play with them and I couldn't really accept that job because I was busy with Fear Factory.
R13: So is Fear Factory the main priority?
COW: It's everybody's priority because it's the entity of your work and we want to keep it going but we also have other outlets when we get home that everybody works on. It's healthy because if we only did Fear Factory we're going to get bored, you gotta keep other things. Plus survival, people think we're stinking rich but we can't survive off Fear Factory, we never had gold, silver or platinum record sales in England. So people think that we're big, we have a name but we're not really a big band.
R13: Who would you like to work with?
COW: I'd like to work with a lot of people actually. I want to be known as someone that works with a lot of artists. But right now I want to work with Mariah Carey. I'd just be drooling over the sound desk, "That sounds great baby, do it one more time." There's something about that woman.
R13:Which products do you currently endorse?
COW: I have a signature Jackson guitar that's out on the market, that you can order from various web-sites like the Jackson website or some guitar stores may carry it. Amplifiers, I use the Krank amplifiers. Ones that Dimebag were using.
R13: Why choose Krank over other typical brands such as Marshall?
COW: I've been using Marshall since I was fifteen years old and but they were never had enough gain for me, I always had to do something to them to get more gain. Then I tried one that Dimebag had I was kinda amazed and when I play into the amplifier I was just like "Wow!" and I got in touch with the guys and I found out they didn't have any of those in production yet and they sent me one of Dimebag's fourteen prototypes, that they were going to give to Dime to test them. That's when I started using them, then I got a bunch more of course. That's all I use, a Krank amplifier, straight into the head, I don't really use any effects. Turn it on and turn it up. It sounds great, so anyone out there who's complaining and bitching that it's crap or whatever, I sent the head to James Hetfield and he loved it, ordered four more.
R13: You're currently confirmed for Wacken, Summer Breeze and Monsters of Rock in Bulgaria but do you plan to do any in the UK?
COW: I don't think so, we only gonna be here in August. I don't think there's any festivals in August in the UK. Download's in June right? We're only going to be here for two weeks then off to South America.
R13: Are you looking forward to more touring?
COW: Yeah it's going to be an awesome tour. I'll have time off when I'm dead.
R13: Thank you.
To find out what Room Thirteen thought of their latest album 'Transgression' click here.