FEAR FACTORY Guitarist: 'Everyone Had Control Of The Band Except The Band'

FEAR FACTORY guitarist Christian Olde Wolbers recently spoke to Planet-Loud.com about the songwriting process for the group's new album, "Archetype". "I just wrote some songs thinking what I would want to hear if I was in the pit," he said. "A song like 'Cyberwaste' is like slam pit all the way. I wanted to bring that energy from when I was twenty one years old again. . . We wanted to put down some really heavy stuff. Especially with Burt's vocals which, on the last two records weren't the Burton C Bell that everyone knew. He had a lot of shit to get out and it rubbed off and it turned him into a different singer. A radio song isn't really what we wanted and it turned him into a different singer. Take a song like [the GARY HUMAN cover] 'Cars', which we loved but we didn't want to do as a single, and, next thing, someone went behind our back and it ended up on the album and the radio. We had lost control of our band. Everyone had control of the band except the band. It was such a destructive pattern for the band. Now we started from scratch, like the bottom up. We wanted a reasonably heavy song that fans would like but the label didn't get it. I had to explain how the metal crowd worked and what they like.. man, they'd never even heard of 'Headbanger's Ball'. I had to give them a quick education. Our label head is a huge guy in the music industry, he used to work for Sharon Osbourne's dad. He wanted to know what we wanted as a band and so we told him. It's weird because it was like when you asked your Mom for money for a video game and she didn't give it to you at first then, when she gave it to you, you kinda held back and felt a bit weird about spending it in case something else better came along. We wanted to do this right and make sure the heavy kids got into it."

Read Olde Wolbers' entire interview with Planet-Loud.com at this location.