“I’m starting my solo career,” Burton says enthusiastically. “I’m working with different producers and co-songwriters, making music that I love, with full control of the music and creative direction.”

Bell‘s discography includes multiple live and recorded collaborations with BLACK SABBATH icon Geezer Butler and JOURNEY‘s Deen Castronovo (as G/Z/R); industrial maverick Al Jourgensen and MINISTRY; and guest vocal appearances with PITCHSHIFTER, CONFLICT, SOIL, STATIC-X, SOULFLY and DELAIN, among others. He’s the vocalist of ASCENSION OF THE WATCHERS and CITY OF FIRE and, of course, the co-creator of FEAR FACTORY and the only musician to appear on every FEAR FACTORY release from 1992 through 2024.

“FEAR FACTORY ushered in an entirely new strand of metal when they emerged from the sweatboxes of L.A. in the early ’90s,” Metal Hammer wrote. “‘Demanufacture’ was so innovative that it sounds as fresh today as it did then; a blistering collision of metal and hardcore that easily rivals any of its peers. In short, a masterpiece,” wrote Kerrang! in an anniversary retrospective. It’s a Decibel magazine Hall Of Fame album, alongside classic records by SCORPIONS, JUDAS PRIEST, SLAYER, ANTHRAX and EMPEROR.

FEAR FACTORY created a sound that revolutionized extreme metal, defined in no small part by Bell‘s innovative scream/sing dichotomy and the influences he brought from post-punk and industrial. Songs like “Replica”, “Linchpin”, “Edgecrusher”, “Fear Campaign”, “Archetype”, “Cyber Waste” and “Zero Signal” are modern metal anthems. “Demanufacture” (1995) and the RIAA gold-certified “Obsolete” (1998) are genre-redefining works heralded by fans and critics as essential albums. Orwell, Bradbury, “Blade Runner”, and sophisticated sci-fi and fantasy works fed Bell‘s lyrics and concepts.

The band toured the world with METALLICA, SLIPKNOT, KORN, MEGADETH and OZZY OSBOURNE, taking bands like SYSTEM OF A DOWN and STATIC-X out as support acts in their early stages. After years of behind-the-scenes band member turmoil and legal issues, Bell left FEAR FACTORY in the fall of 2020.

In the chorus of “Anti-Droid”, he declares: “I’d rather be dead than a slave to the factory.”

Bell says “Anti-Droid” is “a statement about breaking free. Breaking the bonds of what I felt was a prison in many ways. Not just financially or contractually but creatively, as well. I felt constrained to this format we’d written ourselves into. The ‘factory’ doesn’t have a capital F. It’s the factory of the music industry, a certain form of business, and priorities. Being a slave to an established way of thinking is not really freedom. I am moving forward.”