How Bob Rock Almost Produced Fear Factory’s Digimortal
Fear Factory guitarist Dino Cazares joined us for this week’s episode of The MetalSucks Podcast to chat about his public split with former vocalist Burton Seabell, the upcoming new album, Aggression Continuum, dealing with fan backlash and more.
In a more light-hearted portion of the interview, Dino revealed that mega-producer Bob Rock (Mötley Crüe, Metallica, Bon Jovi, etc.) almost ended up producing Fear Factory’s ground-breaking 2001 album, Digimortal. While that tidbit is already public knowledge (it’s briefly mentioned on the album’s Wikipedia page), Dino went into further detail about the forces that led to Rock’s name being on the table and why he ultimately declined.
Speaking on the success of Digimortal, Dino began:
“I felt really confident about the record because I thought it had some really great, strong songs on it, and it has our biggest song to date, which is “Linchpin.” It’s like, like 30 million fuckin’ listens on Spotify [24.7 million as of the time of this writing. -Ed.]. It’s just a song that does not stop. It just keeps going. So it did produce our #1 song that we ever released.
“But no, I was really behind the record, I really loved it. Sure there were a couple things I would have changed on the record. But there were some outside influences that also changed the record into sounding the way it did. The record label really wanted us to have a successful record, they wanted us to go Platinum because we were coming off the success of ‘Obsolete,’ a gold record. So the record company wanted to send in some outside producers who were more commercial type producers.
“I’m not sure if I said this or not but Bob Rock almost produced this album. Bob Rock almost produced ‘Digimortal.’ I had a couple conversations with him, how we were talking about the record and what it was going to sound like and production ideas. But then he ended up taking like a $2 million gig with somebody else. So he didn’t do this record. I was actually kinda happy at the end of the day to go with Mike Plotnikoff and Rhys Fulber, ’cause you know, it also puts it in our control again. ‘Cause who knows what kind of influence Bob Rock would have had on that record, could have been worse.”
Elsewhere in our chat with Dino, he revealed that Burton turned in the record that would end up being called Aggression Continuum to the band’s label without Dino’s knowledge, and with a title and artwork he’d never seen. You can read that story here and listen to the full interview below or here.
