NON-FEAR FACTORY FEAR FACTORY MAY NOT BE CALLED FEAR FACTORY AFTER ALL (GOT ALL THAT?)
Quick re-cap: first original Fear Factory members Dino Cazares and Burton C. Bell announced they were teaming up with non-original Fear Factory member Byron Stroud and never-a-Fear Factory member Gene Hoglan to start a band that would not be called Fear Factory.
Several weeks later the band announced that they would be called Fear Factory.
Now our pal Anso DF at Hipsters Out of Metal! is reporting that original Fear Factory drummer Raymond Herrera told some radio show that nu-Fear Factory can’t be called Fear Factory no’ mo’:
[Christian Olde Wolbers] and I are actually still in Fear Factory. There’s a big legal battle going on right now. Essentially, what’s happened is the big guy and the singer have become friends again and they decided to start a new band, and decided to call it Fear Factory. They never communicated with us about it and act like there was never any contract. So it’s almost like them two against us two; it’s kind of a stalemate. I don’t know what’s gonna happen with the trademark, so to speak. It’s a weird situation.
Despite the fact that this is all enough to make me feel like I’m reading a Heller novel and/or go cross-eyed, I’m not emotionally invested enough (or at all, really) in Fear Factory to find all this bullshit anything but highly amusing. Is it possible that Bell and Cazares are really so dumb that they’re trying to re-start Fear Factory when they don’t have the legal right to do so? I’m guessing they’ll begin their argument with the ol’ “Herrera and Wolbers quit the band and therefore forfeited their ownership” chestnut before finally paying their former band mates a big fat settlement check.
Either that, or they’ll become the 90s answer to LA Guns and we’ll have two Fear Factories roaming the planet. And guess what? I still won’t care about either one as anything other than a source of humor. Which is why I’d like to suggest in advance that the Herrera/Wolbers FF hire Tommy Vext as their vocalist. Zing!
-AR
