Are Fear Factory Planning to Release a New Album Under a Different Band Name?

Here’s a quick catch-up on the ongoing Fear Factory legal situation that has come to light over the past week if you’re just tuning in. It started with a tweet by guitarist Dino Cazares, who told a fan that “There is no new Fear Factory album” despite vocalist Burton Seabell’s previous claims a new album was complete, turned into the label, and slated for a 2019 release. That tweet led MetalSucks to the discovery of court documents detailing a lawsuit between Bell and former band members Christian Olde Wolbers and Raymond Herrera, the details of which are quite convoluted — you can read our detailed analysis here — but the end result of which is that there won’t be new Fear Factory music released any time soon as the legal battle drags on. Most recently, Cazares chimed in on Twitter to express his displeasure with the lawsuit.

That brings us up to today. Dino Cazares has been tweeting up quite a storm of late, and both Ghost Cult and Metal Insider have pointed out that some of those posts contain both the hashtags #monolith (the alleged name of the new Fear Factory album) and #fearcampaign. “Fear Campaign” is, of course, the title of a song from Fear Factory’s 2010 album Mechanize… but it seems random to suddenly be hash-tagging it alongside the new album’s tentative title unless there’s some relevance or relation:

If Fear Factory — featuring Seabell and Cazares, not Herrera and Wolbers — were to release music and tour under a different moniker to skirt around legal issues, Fear Campaign would certainly be a decent choice; it’s close enough to the band’s original name that most folks would probably get the hint, and the “campaign” element gives it a sense of urgency. And there is certainly precedent in the metal world for bands modifying their names as a result of legal issues or member disputes:

Entombed A.D.: Entombed without guitarist Alex Hellid.
Ghost B.C.: The moniker used by Ghost for a period of time when another band named Ghost tried to claim rights to the name.
Venom Inc.: A resurrection of the band’s 1988-1992 lineup.
I Am Morbid: David Vincent and Tim Yeung touring Morbid Angel songs.
Cro-Mags JM: One of two active versions of Cro-Mags, this one featuring John Joseph and Jayson Mackie.

And so on and so forth.

The Ghost Cult article also makes mention of an interview with an unnamed member of Malignancy in which that person says the band can’t book any live dates for 2020 because bassist Mike Heller, who also played in Fear Factory’s most recent lineup, is all booked up with Fear Factory. The site has not linked that interview, though, nor could we find it via search. So take that claim with a giant spoonful of salt.

Dino, for his part, has denied the suggestion in no uncertain terms:

That said, if I were trying to plan for the future with ongoing legal issues still pending, I’d probably deny it too. But for all we know Dino is shooting straight here and the whole Fear Campaign baloney amounts to a bunch of internet conspiracy theorist with metaphorical tinfoil hats.

This much is clear either way, though, from the events of the past week: fans are very, very hungry for new Fear Factory. Hopefully the legal issues get sorted right quick.