Fear Factory - Transgression (2005)Release ID: 1645
The Fear Factory album before this one, Archetype, showed the band's music without Dino Cazares for the first time, with mature rawness. Over half the amount of songs are strong highlights, though I can't say the same for the rest of that album. That f***ed-up Nirvana cover at the end of that album was a foreshadowing sign of how low the band would go without Dino, and that ended up coming true for the longtime Fear Factory fans...
This album Transgression is indeed kind of a transgression! Burton C. Bell was in production control with Toby Wright and he selfishly didn't want any songs written by other members, including faster heavier songs. With guitarist Christian Olde Wolbers frustrated by this, no wonder he left the band later along with drummer Raymond Herrera.
Firing things up is the opener "540,000° Fahrenheit" with a natural hardcore-ish industrial metal sound. That song alone has made the album more noticeable! The title track is closer in sound to Soul of a New Machine. I'm not pleased with the vocals and lyrical immaturity. Still OK though! Next, "Spinal Compression" jumps into the sound of their next album Demanufacture with a killer deathly touch. "Contagion" has the catchy melodic sound of Obsolete, sounding uplifting yet hopeless. My second favorite song here!
"Empty Vision" hails as another great highlight, showing the band's more experimental side from Digimortal. Not as glorious as those previous highlights, but still the band's true sound. I was expecting "Echoes of My Scream" to sound close to the sound of Archetype, but bad news... IT AIN'T!!! This one's just a full-on sin! I mean, they've done the slow melodic ballad aspect before, but this is too soft for their standards. Not like the band at all! "Supernova" sounds more like the alt-rock/metal bands my brother listens to, but it still passes as a suitable highlight. However, "New Promise" is far beyond what even remotely resembles Fear Factory, the closest they've gone to melodic hard rock.
"I Will Follow" is the most sinful cover by the band since their previous album's Nirvana cover. This time they actually sound too much like U2 with not much metalizing. A complete opposite of their usual style! "Millennium" is another cover song that sucks a**. At least they actually made that Killing Joke song a bit like their own, but it sounds too wrong. "Moment of Impact" makes me relieved to finally hear what sounds like true Fear Factory. I'm just not gonna bother with listening to the bonus track "Empire"...
Transgression is like Fear Factory's own Amorphis Far From the Sun, with one half being superb highlights and the other half being more average tracks and total atrocities. It's better to listen to the highlights rather than the whole thing, for a taste of perfection so the weaker songs won't leave you with a sour-as-mold taste....
Favorites: "540,000° Fahrenheit", "Spinal Compression", "Contagion", "Empty Vision", "Supernova", "Moment of Impact"
