It’s not often you get to chat to the singer and founder of the first band you paid to see live, almost two decades prior, but that’s what I had when I got to chat with Burton C Bell via Skype recently. The former Fear Factory frontman is continuing with another project of his, in Ascension of the Watchers, alongside John Bechdel and Jayce Lewis, with the latest of their efforts, ‘Apocrypha’, released this past week, following his very recent step down from the band he co-founded 30 years ago.
We chatted about a wide range of things, and Bell obviously had a lot to say about the project and it’s second album, including
- on how he met Jayce: “well it’s funny, I met Jayce online, about 2005/2006, through MySpace…”;
- on how the new album has a resonance with some earlier Fear Factory tracks: “absolutely… like the one you said about, ‘Therapy for Pain’ (from 1995’s ‘Demanufacture’)…”;
- on his lyric writing for ‘Apocrypha’: “for me, Ascension of The Watchers is the most personal and the most representational – that represents me – that I’ve ever done in my career… every song is about someone that’s near and dear to me…a loved one that’s there, a loved one that’s passed, absence of love, newness of love, the loss of love …”
- on his choice of cover song for the album: “it stuck out as a pop song for me, it has a really dark, intimate nature to it…”; and
- about the overarcing lyrical style, shifting from Fear Factory to Ascension of The Watchers: “here’s an insight into Fear Factory lyrics, I wrote all the lyrics, they come from my personal feelings and my personal thoughts, but with Fear Factory, I put them into a third person narrative, whereas for The Watchers, I made it personal…”
Listen on, as Burton tells us all about other things going on alongside the ‘Apocrypha’ release, revisiting previous other work and much more of his plans to support the release!
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