Monday, February 11, 2019

Fear Factory: Concrete



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.

Concrete Notes

Rating: 2

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