This project was initially met with a lot of scepticism, and why not? Arkaea (a bad, unpronounceable name) sees former Fear Factory members Christian Olde Wolbers and Ray Herrera collaborating with two-fifths of the mediocre Threat Signal and, in the process, writing a record that uses the riffs Wolbers and Herrera had slated for the next Fear Factory record, a move that has dashed the hopes of those waiting for new FF material. But all that seems like just another day at the office when you look at the alternative: shockingly, Burton C. Bell and Dino Cazares have put their differences (which once were so great they culminated in a fist-fight on the Fear Factory tour bus and then towards the initial break-up of the band) aside and reunited in Fear Factory, sans Wolbers and Herrera. That’s a really shifty and mean-spirited thing to do and, because of the seemingly bad faith involved in the new incarnation of Fear Factory, I’m inclined to side with Arkaea on this one. In any case, Years In The Darkness is basically what the ‘09 Wolbers/Herrera Fear Factory record would have been like and, naturally, this basically sounds like Demanufacture or Obsolete except with the random Threat Signal dude who is vastly inferior to Bell singing. That said, Years In The Darkness is the possessor of classic Fear Factory riffs and passages, the point where Wolbers and Herrera have once again out demanufactured Demanufacture and have ambitiously tried to re-create some of Obsolete’s most epic moments, which is no surprise given Herrera’s enthusiastic support of those two particular records. In sum, this could have been one of Fear Factory’s better albums had Cazares not re-entered the picture and fucked everything up. Again.