Before being known to the world as, Fear Factory, the band
briefly followed the moniker of Ulceration. Now, the story goes, the band
wasn't happy with the record deal they had in place and decided to part ways
with their producer. Years later, after the band would split up, certain
contract obligations called for the band to meet their required number of
releases and since the rights to the album belonged to Ross Robinson (the
original producer), "Concrete was released in 2002 in lieu of an original
album.
"Concrete" is essentially, the original songs the
band recorded under the name of Ulceration, songs that would be re-recorded and
appear on "Soul of a New Machine". The "album" as it is
perceived, is little more than a complication of original recordings and bonus
tracks. Of the 16 tracks, 9 are the original versions of what you hear on
"Soul of a New Maine", while a few others were either bonus tracks
that found their way onto future re-releases and a couple unreleased tracks.
“Concrete” may serve as a history of the band, but other
than simple curiosity, the album offers little in the way of anything
interesting to new, but especially to long time fear Factory fans. Robinson's
ideas on how the original tracks should have sounded were widely despised by
fans of the "Soul of a New Machine" recordings (as well as two
original tracks slated for "Demanufacture".) The sound, for the most
part, is on par with what a demo would sound like. The instruments sound
distant, the vocals are even rougher than they sounded on "Soul of a New
Machine" and ultimate, sound like an incomplete product. The couple bonus
tracks that appeared on "Obsolete" are nothing new (given they are on
the digipak of said album) and the few unreleased recordings were unreleased
for a reason. They suffer the same flaws as the other Robinson tracks and offer
little to even die hard Fear Factory fans.
All in all, this may have been the album Ulceration was
slated to release years ago, but after one listen to "Concrete" and
you’ll understand why the band decided to head in a different direction from
the one they were traveling. This release is the definition of meeting the
record labels requirements, as it offers little more than a glimpse of what
might have been, but thankfully never was.
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