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Fear Factory: Transgression

08/04/10 || Smalley

I very well could’ve just Class6’d “Demanufacture”, Fear Factory’s best album, instead of reviewing this, their worst album, but I dunno… sometimes it’s just more fun to criticize a lame album than it is to praise a great one, and I’ve been reviewing a lot of good shit lately, so now I’m in the mood for something I don’t like. And boy, do I not like “Transgression”; after being let down by “Obsolete” and “Digimortal”, “Archetype” kicked a surprising amount of ass (die Abyss, DIE!!!), but sadly, the success from that caused FF’s label to pressure them into hurrying a follow-up, and what we got didn’t come anywhere near being worth the shorter wait.

…but, you could easily be fooled by opener “540,000° fahrenheit”, since it is pretty catchy, despite Raymond Herrera’s overly clank-y drum sound, and Burton C. Bell’s characteristically lame vocal performance, in both his limited clean vocals, and his strained attempts at something harsher (there’s a reason he made our Worst Singers list, ya know). Anyway, this certainly isn’t Fear Factory’s greatest song, but it doesn’t really raise any red flags either, and makes for a decent continuation of the “Archetype” style.

Unfortunately, “Transgression” hits a road block once it reaches the title track, with a muddy guitar sound, boring, momentum-less songwriting, and extremely annoying harsh vocals from Bell, even worse than they were before. Then there’s “Spinal compression”, and oh man… the songwriting and production here get even shittier . I really don’t get it, FF; the production at the beginning of the album was acceptable, and the songwriting was decent, so why have things stooped to the level of this awful-sounding snoozer? Did you progressively lose your ability to songwrite as recording wore on? Did the quality of your equipment substantially degrade with each new song session? Bah!

“Contagion” turns out marginally better than those two misfires, but still isn’t very interesting, and the same goes for “Empty vision”, and the whole fucken rest of the album; what’s up with how apocalyptically dull and pathetically-wussy shit like “Echo of my scream” is!? Fear Factory used to be able to put tons of oomph into their songwriting, but it seems not so here, as the “Transgression” material is basically either weak, wannabe “headbangers”, or sleep-inducing softer songs. It’s like FF wanted to balance the aggression of “Archetype” with the accessibility of “Obsolete”, so they ended up with an uncomfortable mid-point, a jack of no trades and master of none kind of album.

The band did the heavy stuff well on “Archetype”, and even the real melodic tracks on “Obsolete” (such as “Timelessness”) were pretty good, but I guess pulling off either of those styles here was just beyond FF’s capabilities. In addition to all that, the production here sucks something fierce, so, beside the opener, “Transgression” is pretty much a worthless album, and I’m sick of listening to/writing about it now, so I’ll just move on to Class6’ing “Demanufacture”, thank you kindly.

4,5

Information
Released: 2005
Label: Trillion Records
Website: Fear Factory MySpace
Band
Burton C. Bell: vocals
Christian Olde Wolbers: guitar
Byron Stroud: bass
Raymond Herrera: drums

Tracklist
01. 540,000° Fahrenheit
02. Transgression
03. Spinal Compression
04. Contagion
05. Empty Vision
06. Echo Of My Scream
07. Supernova
08. New Promise
09. I Will Follow
10. Millennium
11. Moment Of Impact

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