Q and A: Burton C Bell

By BRIAN GIFFIN

AS THE self-styled Dry Lung Vocal Martyr, Burton C Bell was the frontman for California metal innovators Fear Factory for 30 years. He has now started a new creative chapter, recording and touring under his own name. Next week he will be in Australia, a favourite destination, with an expansive set that will include songs gathered from across his career. While preparing for the visit, we got the chance to speak with him about his music and influences.

Hot Metal: It’s awesome that you’re wearing a Godflesh shirt, because I remember from chats we’ve had in the past how much of an influence they were on you.
Burton C Bell: “And still are! I would say they are a huge influence on me, and I’m still inspired by their music. Even their new music… Justin Broadrick keeps kicking ass!”

HM: Let’s talk about your solo tour of Australia. I know this is a place that has a very special place for you as an artist – what’s it going to be like coming down here for the first time as a solo performer?
BCB: “It’s going to be fantastic. It’s going to be a dream come true. It’s going to be such an incredible experience to finally come down to Australia. I’m starting the next chapter of my career, and to have Australia as the training ground for it is going to be fantastic. Australian audiences have always been receptive, supportive and just full-on, and so I’m just looking forward to it. I think that, because of all the tours I’ve done to Australia, I’m grateful for the grassroots I’ve developed over the years and I think that’s definitely going to benefit me on this tour, for sure.”

HM: We haven’t had the pleasure of seeing you do anything else outside of Fear Factory, so this will be the chance to check out your other stuff.
BCB: “Over the last couple of years as I’ve been developing the sound for this next chapter, one day it came to me, this mantra: Heavy, groovy, dark and moody. That’s what I want to capture. That’s what I promote. That’s what I want to create. So all the music that I’m writing and all the music that I’ll be playing – because I’ll be playing music from my entire career – not just Fear Factory, but Ascension of the Watchers, G/Z/R, City of Fire, and the new songs I’ve been releasing and writing, so I’ll be playing ‘Anti-droid’, I’ll be playing ‘Technical Exorcism’… by the time I get down there, I should have two more songs ready to go.”

HM: How are you going to fit all that into a set?
BCB: “That’s going to be the challenging part, getting all the songs from the different things I’ve done and make them all work together into one. It’s going to be over an hour.”

HM: Will  you be focusing on personal favourites from your catalogue, or will it be fan favourites – or are they the same songs?
BCB: “I think they’re the same, really. But they’re going to be personal favourites of mine, that fit the criteria of heavy, groovy, dark and moody.”

HM: In your socials recently you wrote that a lot of the things you have been writing about for most of your career seem to be coming to light. Does it frighten you that those things are unfolding?
BCB: “I wouldn’t say it frightens me! (ha) Suffice to say that I saw it coming, so I have been preparing myself for it. I try not to … I’ve always made it a point to try to not have my lyrics politically motivated or inspired, but have them socially inspired. So whatever affects us socially, I write about so we can all understand. Politics is just stupid! But it does affect us, it affects the world we live in, so I will continue to write about subjects that don’t just affect me personally. And when you can talk about something that affects you personally, that’s when you can make it relatable so people know what you’re talking about.”

HM: It’s almost prophetic the way you were talking about things like AI many years ago. You got that inspiration from others, but it’s striking the way it’s all coming about now.
BCB: “Yes it’s coming to light, and there’s still plenty to write about. AI is already becoming sown into the fabric of humanity. There was an inventor and also a writer called Ray Kurtzweil – a very brilliant man. He wrote about the advent of the spiritual machine. AI is that, beginning. What Ray Kurtzweil said is that technology develops exponentially. So what was developed last year has already developed tenfold in just two years. There’s so many things that humanity hasn’t yet considered, that sci-fi has, but humanity and the general public and those that are our elected officials are not prepared to deal with. For instance, the idea that AI is helping itself. It’s spawning itself, so does that make it a being that, if it creates itself, does it have a soul? Does it have rights? If it’s an entity that can exist on its own, does it have rights? The one story that closely relates with what we’re dealing with right now is I, Robot. If you’ve ever read that book – it’s an easy read – but that’s so close to where we are right now.”

HM: You’ve always been across that, those works from Asimov and Dick and Heinlein and people like that. If AI and those technologies develop exponentially, what type of things do you think may be possible from AI, for example, in four or five years from now?
BCB: “In five years, I believe we’re going to have an entire system that was created solely by AI. Where AI’s going to create its own business, create its own website, create its own source of revenue to allow it to keep expanding its own growth.” 

HM: That sounds very much like what you were writing about on Obsolete!
BCB: “Haha! It very much is – “Securitron”. And Digimortal as well. I did write a story for Digimortal but I never released it.”

HM: Do you think that might be a possibility in the future?
BCB: “Maybe. I was going through my notes and I came across it, and I thought, “Holy shit!” I also wrote a story for The Industrialist that did come out, and I did one for Genexus as well.” 

HM: What’s the next step for you? Moving on from those things you did in the past, what are you doing in the future?
BCB: “Well my next chapter… I still write about things that are very personal and that affect me. As a writer I observe, and we all live in this world, but I’m grateful that I have the ability to try and write it down poetically so I can talk about it in song. That’s the way I like to relay a message. So for me, I’m going to continue paying attention to the world around me. The next song I’m going to be releasing is definitely inspired by social events, and then there’s another song that’s more of a personal, family thing than anything else. So one’s personal, and one’s social – but it’s all personal in general.” 

HM: We can’t live in a bubble. Even as an observer, you are experiencing something.
BCB: “As somebody who lives in this world, I can’t let things go by and not say anything. I want to do my part to get a different point of view or a different perspective out there as well as I can.” 

HM: It’s going to be great to have you here again, because it’s been quite a long while since we’ve seen you here.
BCB: “Yeah. The last time I toured Australia was 2016, but I was down there in 2020. I was hanging out in Australia for about six months.”

HM: I remember that. It was an extended vacation was it?
BCB: “Nothing was going on. The pandemic was still going on in the US. My wife was actually down in Sydney working and we had a companion ticket so I was able to fly down there and stay with her. Since the world was shut down, I just thought, Well, I’ll shut down here!”

HM: Being here like that would give you more time to enjoy it than if you were working as a touring musician.
BCB: “Yeah, spending that amount of time there was great. I don’t know if you remember but the first time Fear Factory went down there in ’93, I stayed another two and a half months after that tour, and I got a job as a roadie for an Australian band and we drove from Esperance all the way up to Darwin for a tour. So I got to do that. Being in Australia for those few months in 2020, unfortunately because of the pandemic, I wasn’t able to travel all that much out of New South Wales, but we went to the beach and we went… someplace I can’t remember the name of. It was really nice. I got to learn a lot about Sydney!” 

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TOUR DATES

JUNE 11: The Triffid, Brisbane (+ Monsters Around Us)
JUNE 12: King Street Band Room, Newcastle (+ Mortality)
JUNE 13: Factory Theatre, Sydney (+ Mortality)
JUNE 14: Corner Hotel, Melbourne (+ The Last Martyr)