Review by Sonny for Fear Factory - Fear Is the Mindkiller (1993)

Fear Is the Mindkiller is an EP of remixes of tracks from the FF's debut, Soul of a New Machine, with three of the six tracks being various versions of Self Immolation, one of which is the original album version. To be honest, the first two tracks sound fucking horrible to my ears, bringing to mind images from second-rate post-apocalyptic movies where tribes of rejects from Mad Max 2 dance round huge bonfires before setting off to harass the movie's main characters. Industrial metal mixed with electronic dance music and exactly the sort of thing that overloads my auditory sense mechanism, verging on the unbearable. For me personally, Hell sounds like this.

Things do improve after that and, in fairness, the remixes of Scapegoat and Scumgrief aren't quite that bad, but Scapegoat sounds poorly put together (the clean singing sections just sound right out of place) with Scumgrief (Deep Dub Trauma Mix) probably coming out on top of the remixed tracks. The Liquid Sky Mix of Self Immolation also has it's moments, but it does tend to drag on a bit. I know the fact that I have never been part of the EDM scene massively affects my opinion here, but it is what it is. Obviously, for me, the original version of Self Immolation is the best track here by a long way and even that is well short of FF's best work.