Ex-FEAR FACTORY frontman BURTON C. BELL announces new music
03-02-2025
In an interview with Metal Magnitude at last month’s Metal Hall Of Fame in Anaheim, California, former FEAR FACTORY frontman Burton C. Bell spoke about his plans for the coming months. He said: “I’ve released three singles in the past year and a half. I’m doing one song at a time with videos, just pushing it that way. And I’ve got some new music. I’m mastering a new song right now and working on vocals, recording vocals for another song right now. I have some plans, but I’ve got some new music on the horizon very soon.”
Asked if he has assembled a band for studio work and for touring purposes, Burton said: “I have a band put together — a great bunch of guys, all local to (Los Angeles). They’re in — I wouldn’t say well-known bands, but they are in very well respected bands in L.A. And I love these guys. I curated these guys for the past two years.
“So I’ve got some new music, working on currently,” he added. “And that’s how it’s working. I’m very happy. It’s just moving forward.”
In a separate interview with Reality Check TV conducted on January 24 at this year’s NAMM convention in Anaheim, Bell stated about his future plans: “I’ve got new music coming on the horizon under my own name, Burton C. Bell. I’ve got a great band behind me. I’ve got a new master today that I approved of. So I’ve just been releasing singles instead of an album — so I’m just releasing singles. And the next song is a banger, dude. It’s a banger. People are gonna be stoked.”
Asked about possible live shows in support of his new music, Burton said: “I’m working on some tours. I do have a tour I’ll be announcing in February — not in the States, unfortunately. But I’m gonna announce a tour in February.”
Regarding why there hasn’t been a U.S. tour announced yet, Burton said: “I’ve gotta do it right. It has to be the right package to present myself properly the way I wanna be presented. ‘Cause now that I am in control, I’m gonna do it the way it should be done.”
Watch the interview (starting at the 12:19 time slot) below.
Video of Bell‘s December 13, 2024 concert at The Regent in Los Angeles, California as the support act for GOD FORBID can be seen below.
Watch the previously released “Anti-Droid” below.
“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.”
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