Fear Factory are Discussing a Soul of a New Machine Anniversary Tour

Touring isn’t set to return any time soon, but that hasn’t stopped bands from looking towards a future when we can once again get sweaty and gross at concerts together without worrying about coming down with a life-threatening respiratory infection.

For Fear Factory, the industrial metal pioneers appear to be mulling over a tour celebrating their 1992 debut, Soul of a New Machine, once social distancing guidelines are lifted. Guitarist Dino Cazares took to Twitter over the weekend to ask fans whether they’d be interested in such an endeavor — most Fear Factory fans hold the band’s later albums Demanufacture and Obsolete in higher regard — and while he didn’t say it explicitly, that album does have a 30th anniversary on the way:

Fear Factory already celebrated one of their most famous records on tour in recent years — the 20th anniversary of Demanufacture in 2015 and 2016 — but teases of the same for Obsolete never came to fruition, perhaps because of the band’s ongoing legal issues.

Speaking of those legal issues — which see Cazares and vocalist Burton Seabell locked in a fight with former members Chirstian Olde Wolbers and Raymon Herrera over the rights to the band’s name — it’s not clear whether Fear Factory could even tour as “Fear Factory” right now. Rumors surfaced last year that Cazares and Seabell were mulling over a similar-but-different band name for a touring outfit, such as Fear Campaign, but nothing has yet come of those rumors, and with much of the world still in lockdown it’ll be some time before they need urgently to address the issue.

As for Soul of a New Machine, I reckon Dino’s correct in thinking that a large portion of the band’s fanbase wouldn’t care about a tour celebrating that record, per se, but I think a lot folks would come out anyway just to see the band play live, especially since it’s been so long since they’ve done anything. So, y’know, why not?