By Aaron Small

Try to find the word arkaea in a dictionary – you won’t. Google it and all you get is band-related sites, which is exactly the point. “We made up the word,” admits drummer Raymond Herrera, formerly of FEAR FACTORY. “The idea originally was to come up with a different word or name, so for searching purposes – ‘cause you’ve got to think virally now – something that when you type in the band’s name, a million other things aren’t going to come up. So we thought we’d come up with our own word, but we wanted it to sound kind of cool. One day (guitarist) Christian (Olde Wolbers, also ex-Fear Factory) called me and said, ‘We finally figured out the name of the band – ARKAEA.’ I asked him what it meant and he answered, ‘What does METALLICA mean?’ Fair enough. That’s how the whole thing happened. The name was created. It wasn’t meant to mean anything really.”

Joining Fear Factory alumni Raymond and Christian in Arkaea are two members of THREAT SIGNAL – vocalist Jon Howard and bassist Pat Kavanagh. The initial meeting between these metal brethren occurred when Christian produced Threat Signal’s debut album, Under Reprisal, which was released in 2006. “That’s how this came to be,” confirms Raymond. “When our whole thing was getting figured out, ‘cause the Arkaea record (Years In The Darkness) was originally written as the next Fear Factory record – but a lot of personal issues ended up happening there. So we decided to do something else with the music, rather than wait around. It was really Christian who had the idea. He led the charge with getting Jon in here. It sounded like a great idea to me. Soon after that, Jon started doing vocals on certain songs. He was turning the stuff around in days, having never heard it before. I was really impressed. The more we worked together, the more we started getting stuff done. Within a couple of months, we pretty much had all the lyrics written, parts of it were really concrete. It was actually a pretty quick process once we got started.”

There’s a bit of an age gap separating the Fear Factory half from the Threat Signal half of Arkaea. “Yeah, definitely. I think I beat them by 11 years,” says Raymond. “Christian and I are both 36 now. Pat and John are 24 or 25, so there’s a little bit of an age difference there.” Perhaps surprisingly, that didn’t present any difficulty in so far as referencing older albums and/or bands. “Actually they’re very on top of what was around back in the day as opposed to what’s happening now. We didn’t have any of those issues, but that’s actually a really good point. I didn’t think about that. They’re actually very knowledgeable as far as music before their time. What’s weird for me is, I’ve always been the youngest one in the band. Even with Fear Factory, Dino (Cazares, guitarist) is 47 now and Burt (Bell, vocalist) is 42, I’ve always been way younger. Now it’s almost like the tables have turned, I’m one of the older ones now. I hadn’t really thought about it until this interview actually – thanks a lot man (laughs).”

Christian has said that Arkaea has allowed him to be more creative on guitar. However the same doesn’t necessarily hold true for Raymond as a drummer? “I’ve never felt there was a lack of creativity from a drumming perspective. What I do with Fear Factory is really what I do. I don’t feel like I’m writing myself into a box. This is what I enjoy. The style that I play is the style I’m known for. With Christian, it might have been more of a forced thing ‘cause he had to come in and fill shoes.” Christian was actually Fear Factory’s third bassist, preceded by Andy Romero and Andrew Shives. Then when Dino Cazares left the band, Christian switched from bass to guitar. “He took somebody else’s place, whereas with Fear Factory, I’ve been there since day one. There was never this thing I needed to conform to or abide by. I can imagine with Christian it would have been like, now I get to be my own thing. From a mental capacity, it’s probably just more of an ebb and flow. I could see that. But to me, on the guitar, it sounds like Christian is doing what Christian does best. There are a couple of little nuances of Steph (Carpenter) from DEFTONES here and there, some of the melodic stuff. But for the most part, it’s everything that Christian is all about.”

As previously mentioned, approximately half of the Arkaea songs were originally intended for the new Fear Factory album, explaining the sonic similarities between the two bands. “At the point we decided we were going to do something else, we were eight songs in,” reveals Raymond. “Those eight songs are on the Arkaea record; that’s the lion’s share of the record. Everything essentially stemmed from the fact that Christian and I had spent seven or eight months working on this stuff, to find out from Burt that he doesn’t want to sign a new record deal and he doesn’t want to go on tour. He didn’t want to do anything with Fear Factory. So why did we spend all this time doing all these songs? I think it was more out of frustration than anything else. I was on the sidelines like, if he doesn’t want to work, he doesn’t want to work. We can’t force him to – whatever. Christian was more along the lines of ‘Screw that! I’m not going to throw away all this work that we did.’ He was right. There was no point for us to sit around. If you really think about it, in the grand scheme of things, we’re both 36 years old now. The clock is ticking. What are we going to do? Wait around for somebody who maybe wants to work or doesn’t want to work? Or do we want to just do our own thing? Ultimately in our minds, we wrote eight songs. But if we needed to write a Fear Factory record we could do that as well. I never really concerned myself with, is this new project going to sound too much like Fear Factory because that’s all I’ve ever really done. That’s my main thing. I’ve done a lot of side projects, but anything that I put my stamp on, anything you hear me play, people automatically think, that’s Raymond from Fear Factory. To try and steer away from that, what’s the point? So of course it was going to have my signature because it’s me signing. I wasn’t too concerned with that. Could Arkaea and Fear Factory co-exist? Absolutely. I don’t’ think there’s an issue with that. It would almost be like if I thought there was a concern with Dino doing DIVINE HERESY and that sounding too much like Fear Factory. I didn’t think that was an issue and when I heard the record (Bleed The Fifth). I thought it was good. I remember I actually went and bought that record when it came out. Of course it sounds like Fear Factory, Dino was a big part of the sound. It wasn’t just me. People always want to create some kind of controversy. To each their own. I’ve got no squabbles with anybody.”

Not so fast. Raymond and Christian have filed a lawsuit against Burton and Dino over their use of the Fear Factory name. The vocalist and guitarist, along with drummer Gene Hoglan and bassist Byron Stroud have been calling themselves Fear Factory without authorization. “It’s getting uglier and uglier unfortunately. Ultimately what happened is Dino and Burt became friends again, which is really good to hear because that whole thing was ridiculous to begin with, but whatever. I digress. I heard they were going to be doing this new thing with Gene and Byron. I thought that was an incredible lineup, what a great idea. But then as time went on, I heard they were going to call it Fear Factory. Ultimately they did call it Fear Factory without any contractual meetings. There is nothing on paper that reflects anything they’re doing or talking about. So we had to get a lawyer. Ultimately, I don’t want to fight these guys, but they leave me no choice. How can they think they’re going to call their new band Fear Factory - the band that we all created from day one and assume that we’re not going to do anything about it? That’s ridiculous! I guess they’re doing it because there’s a lot of money behind the name Fear Factory and a lot to be gained financially from it. But it seems to me, if they really wanted to get rid of Christian and me, they could have just done a new band with a new name. It seems like such a big hassle for them to have gone this route and done everything so wrong. It doesn’t make sense to me. It’s discouraging to the fans and ultimately they’re not looking out for Byron and Gene if they’re going to be doing things underhanded like this. That’s disrespectful. I’m sure Gene and Byron were thinking that Burt and Dino would have figured this out with Raymond and Christian ahead of time – and they didn’t. It’s really unfortunate! It’s a pending lawsuit. Dino and Burt are badmouthing Christian and me in the press – whatever. It’s too bad. These guys aren’t children; they’re older than me. You’d think they know how the world works. I actually have tried to reach out to Burt. I have tried to reach out to Dino. Just looking at the greater good, I called them a couple months ago to say, if you guys want to continue with or without me, that’s fine. But we need to come to an agreement. They never called me back. We’ve tried to set up countless meetings with their counsel and Dino and Burt refused to have any meetings. Christian and me have nothing to hide. What’s the deal? I think at the end of everything, I look at Christian and I’m thinking we made the right decision. I’d rather do this fresh new band, this clean new project, without any of that squabbling and fighting. If Fear Factory comes to be and we end up working things out, cool. If not, it’s just going to be this lawsuit that’s going to keep going on and really, nobody wins with that. I’ve got a lot of negative feedback from fans! But I’ve got nothing to do with it other than I’m defending myself, which I have to.”

The topic switches to the cover art for Years In The Darkness, created by Gustavo Sazes, who has done work for GOD FORBID, KRISIUN and OLD MAN’S CHILD to name a few. The image depicts a modern looking, skyscraper-dominated city waterfront underneath menacing storm clouds, being threatened by nefarious waves. “It’s great. It’s almost like beauty and tragedy. I love the contrast. There’s a lot of different ways to look at this: it’s like the chaos around us. Or, no matter what we build it can always be brought down. I like the whole idea of the Years In The Darkness title with that album cover. It’s really fitting. One of the first things that caught my eye was that it isn’t typical of a metal band. It’s almost more like a movie poster. It has that cinematic kind of feel to it. So right off the bat, it doesn’t pigeonhole anything. Obviously the music is heavier than anything else. It’s definitely metal. But I like the packaging in the sense that it’s dark and glossy. I love the whole look of it. Then the inside of it is more like desert, so it’s a contrast there as well. We were originally going to call the album, Break The Silence, which is one of the other songs on the album. But as the cover came into fruition, Years In The Darkness was a very fitting title.”

None other than Terry Date (SOUNDGARDEN, PANTERA, WHITE ZOMBIE) mixed the album. “One of the interesting things was, and obviously this is kind of a throwback to the fact that we’ve been doing this for a long time, we didn’t have a lot of money to make this album. But I’ve owned a recording studio for a little over three years now. We were able to make a record for essentially pennies on the dollar ‘cause we own everything. We were able to take what would normally go towards the record and put it into mixing and mastering. We were finally able to get the stars to align with Terry. We’ve been trying to work with him for years and it’s never worked out. He’s busy all the time! It just so happened that he had a pocket of time that aligned almost perfectly with our mixing date. We got him a couple of songs and he actually enjoyed it. He had a really good time doing it. It’s ironic that we were trying for years to get him to work with us in Fear Factory and it never panned out. Finally with this new band, we were able to make it happen. What’s even cooler than that is, this isn’t something you generally get with a new band with a debut album. It kind of sets a precedent from the beginning that this is the real deal. This isn’t some little side thing that we decided to do as weekend warriors. We want people to understand this is a real project.”