Fear Factory

Fear Factory play Scout Bar on Thursday, November 5, with Mushroomhead and Nine Treasures opening. It's a heavy bill for a Thursday night, and the headliner brings a long history of industrial metal with them.

Fear Factory came out of the Los Angeles thrash scene in the early 1990s. Their 1992 debut, Soul of a New Machine, set the template: Dino Cazares' staccato, machine-like riffs paired with Burton C. Bell's blend of death-metal howls and soaring singing, all driven by Raymond Herrera's drumming. The 1995 album Demanufacture became a groundbreaking classic, certified Gold in Australia and Silver in the UK, and its track "Zero Signal" landed on the Mortal Kombat soundtrack. The 1997 remix album Remanufacture featured then-29-year-old Thomas Holkenborg, later known as Junkie XL, and the 1998 concept album Obsolete brought in the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra. Linchpin (2001) became their biggest streaming-era hit.

After a split in 2002, the band reunited in 2004 with Cazares back on guitar. Mechanize (2010) was hailed as a return to form, followed by the concept albums The Industrialist (2012) and Genexus (2015). Their tenth album, Aggression Continuum (2020), reunited the classic lineup of Cazares, Bell, and Herrera.

They're sharing the stage with Mushroomhead and Nine Treasures, so there's more than one act to catch. The show is at Scout Bar, 18307 Egret Bay Blvd, Houston, TX 77058, starting at 7 PM.