Having been on somewhat of a Fear Factory binge recently, It would of been nice to have first written about some of their classic albums as the Los Angeles band have stuck rigidly to their formula over the years. So unsurprisingly, this new collection of ten songs offers little more than a rehashing of ideas that were once a breath of fresh air. That being said, Aggression Continuum is hard not to enjoy. Fear Factory tighten up the mechanical pummeling machinery with crisp and clicky drums, tightly chugged low end grooves and punchy synths to amp up a spacey component to their sound.
With an anger fueled theme of anti establishment dystopia, the tracks move through predictable motions. Swaying from the tight, cold mechanical channeled aggression of their syncopated rhythmic assault, to the warm uplifts led by Burton Bell's enigmatic clean vocals. They swoop in with a swooning power that pulls the metallic beast towards the heavens above. Between them, there is always room for a Groove or Thrash riff to bust out and please the crowd with the mosh riff but on this album those break out moments didn't carry the impact like they've had in the past.
A couple good songs in the opening get things off to a good start but as the music stretches on the song structures dissipates into mediocrity as to much hinges on the singular ideas. Its symphonic component could of been an interesting avenue to be explored as its underwhelming yet gleaming strings offer a little more humanity that the Industrial leaning synth tones one might expect. This "cleaner" tone sounds nice but the chemistry rarely feels more than the sum of its parts.
With Fear Factory being a band of intentness pummeling of tightly syncopated grooves, much of the record becomes a drone as track after track does little to splay aesthetics or formula. Its more interesting riffs and moments gets spaced out to far between this monotony and thus with each listen the excitement wore of quickly. Ive been trying to make an effort to avoid predictable records like this. Given its been six years I was really hoping the absence would yield something special on return.
Rating: 5/10