FEAR FACTORY frontman Burton C. Bell is featured in a new interview with Mark Holmes at Metal Discovery, conucted in Manchester, England on December 15th, 2012. An excerpt is available below:

MD: To quote you about the new album, you’ve said in a recent interview that "It’s probably the most Fear Factory record that we’ve done in a long time." So was the writing process for The Industrialist about reconnecting with your roots to a degree?

Bell: "Absolutely. We were more focussed on this record than Mechanize. Mechanize was more the 'getting to know you' stage again and, after two years, that was done so we were able to really focus. Over the few years, I kept thinking what was really cool about Fear Factory is an element that’s really missing and that’s the industrial element, and the soundscapes we used to do and just the cool experimentation we did to add that element into our music. Before we went into the studio, I was talking to Dino and Rhys and I was like, 'Man, we’ve really got to do this'… not to make an industrial record but to really create that hybrid again where we become an industrial metal band that we started out as. I think we really did it right and I think doing it with drum programming not only simplified and expedited the whole writing process but it really added the element of the industrial sound sonically. We were able to manipulate and play with it… as we were writing; we were able to take pieces and arrange them really quickly, like, 'This works better over here' and, so, it was just, 'Wow, we should’ve done this a long time ago!#"

MD: Demanufacture is still talked about to this day as your seminal album and remains one of the seminal metal records of the nineties as well so do you think that will always be the benchmark against which all your subsequent material will be judged? And do you think people get caught up in the nostalgia of that album too much?

Bell: "Yeah, people do, especially fans that have been around since the beginning. I’m guilty as well for my favourite bands – you know, they were great back then but they kind of lost the plot. Like U2, they were great from Boy all the way to The Joshua Tree but after that, for me, they just lost the plot. But you create an album and there’s always those benchmark albums for certain bands, which is great because you set a standard for yourself and you don’t want to deviate too much from it or you’ll alienate your fans but you do want to improve upon it and maybe even better yourself. I think we did that on The Industrialist; I think it’s a record that rivals Demanufacture. If Demanufacture wasn’t a classic, The Industrialist would be that. If The Industrialist was our debut album, people would be like, 'Whoah, fuck!' I think it definitely matches the classic element."

Click here for the complete interview.

Fear Factory recently announced a live date for Los Angeles, California at The Key Club on January 26th, 2013. PRONG and THROWN INTO EXILE are confirmed as support for the gig. More details will be revealed soon.

The video for the title track of Fear Factory's new album, The Industrialist, is now online. The video blends live performance footage from the band with imagery featured within the artwork of the album. Watch 'The Industrialist' below: