Album Review – Fear Factory “Digimortal” 2001

  I recently reviewed Fear Factory’s newest record The Industrialist, and declared it pretty damn good, and in so doing I cast some negative aspersions on this outing, Digimortal. Feeling a bit guilty, I decided to give it another spin to see how it holds up as a complete unit after a decade.

Ouch. Digimortal is weaksauce, made worse by its unfortunate, trendy flirtations with nu-metal and hip-hop. “Linchpin”, “Invisible Wounds (Dark Bodies)” and “Memory Implants (Never End)” are quality tracks, but the rest of the songs are  just the packing material surrounding these nuggets. “Back the Fuck Up” has a Judgement Night – style bounce to it, but I think we can 100% chalk that up to guest artist B-Real. 

Add to this a decidedly weak mix that underlines Dino Cazares’ phoned-in performance (songs often lack guitars in the verses altogether) and Burt Bell’s most inconsistent vocals to date and you have a mere collection of ideas, not a complete record. The B-side compilation Hatefiles would later bring to light some wildly different (but not better) mixes of this material that show a band flailing about for something to stick the landing.

Transgression gets a lot of heat from FF fans, but Transgression was a rush job. Digimortal is fully endorsed (at the time), band-involved product that happens to be awfully half-assed. It’s not the end of the world, but it does capture a moment in time where a band of one-time leaders took their foot off the gas and coasted. 4.5 out of 10