Metal-Rules.com spoke with former FEAR FACTORY guitarist Dino Cazares about his new project DIVINE HERESY recently. A few excerpts from the chat found here follow:

Metal-Rules.com: When you were looking for a singer, were you looking for someone in particular or were you looking for an unknown?

Dino: "I was leaning toward an unknown guy, though we did have a couple of guys that were in bigger, well-known bands. I can't really say who they were but one of them...their guitar player died, he was shot. I think you can guess who that was. Another one was in a death metal band called DYING FETUS and another guy was in DROWNING POOL for

a while. Actually, Jamey Jasta (HATEBREED) wanted to sing on this project and he did sing one song. He didn't sing on Bleed The Fifth but he did sing on the demo version. I really liked all of the singers but I wanted to find one guy that could be like all of them and that's what I found."

Metal-Rules.com: So, on the album are you playing seven or eight-stringed guitars?

Dino: "I haven't played six-strings since 1995, since Demanufacture. I have been using seven-strings ever since. It just seemed like a natural progression for me to go to a seven-string guitar because I was always tuning down my six-string guitar. When you tune down a sixth-string to around 'B', the strings tend to get floppy because of the neck dimensions. When you start getting into the seven-string guitars, they added the extra seventh string so it could handle the low tuning but then I started tuning that one lower. That's where the eight-string comes in now. Eight-string guitar has a thirty-inch scale neck, which is longer and it had the 'F' sharp. But I won't be using the eight-string for everything. I feel more comfortable using the seven-string. The majority of this album is with the seven-string but there are two songs on this record where I used the eight-string: 'Closure' and 'Soul Decoded'. We have b-sides that I did with eight-strings but I'm not sure when they will see the light of day. Probably not until a digi-pak or something like that, but you will hear more of it on the b-sides."

Metal-Rules.com: You brought up solos and I guess you probably get this question a lot, but why did you not do solos on any Fear Factory albums but there are solos happening in Divine Heresy?

Dino: "Well, like I said, each project I approach, I approach differently. Fear Factory simply didn't call for solos. It didn't need it. There was a period when solos were overdone. The Yngwie Malmsteen's were dried out. It was just getting way too played out. Everything was always focused on the solo, so when I was doing Fear Factory, I wanted to rebel against that sort of thing. I wanted to against the norm. Everybody was doing solos and I wanted to go the opposite direction and it became very successful. It became so successful that it inspired other bands like KORN and DEFTONES to do the same. They didn't do solos, either. Now, the funny thing is that a lot of bands are doing solos again. Now it's almost like it's all about the solos.

Metal-Rules.com: Yeah, they seem to be coming back, that's for sure.

Dino: "That's why I decided to keep it to a minimum and not overdo it. There's only four solos on the record, where most bands have solos going through every part of the song. There are some bands that can do it amazingly well and write good songs with it. DRAGONFORCE, for instance. I'm definitely not trying to compete with that kind of stuff. I am a guy who just wants to write memorable songs, songs that will last through time, like 'Replica" and "Edgecrusher', two very memorable songs. PANTERA's 'Walk' is an amazing song that people will remember for a long time to come, it's in the metal history books. Those are the kind of riffs that I want to write, that people will remember for a long time to come. I don't claim to be the best rhythm player, or the best guitar player, or the best solo player. I just think that I'm good at writing catchy riffs. A lot of people like to write fifty riffs on one song. I'm not that kind of guy at all. I've done some great songs with two riffs. 'Replica' ...two riffs."