Look, I don’t know what’s going on in the Fear Factory camp. Or rather; in the two FF camps.

I think I utter the wishes of many former and present Fear Factory fans when I say that I’d wish Burton, Dino, Christian and Raymond would just sit down, use common sense, a therapist or whatever and get in the sodding studio and create the magic they did something that now seems like a long time ago.

Put all the shit aside, guys and go out and do it! Come on!

I read this interview with Raymond Herrera where he says that the combination of him, Christian Olde Wolbers and the two Threat Signal members Jon Howard (vox) and Pat Kavanagh (bass) is perfect and agrees with the interviewer that Jon Howard sounds a lot like the Linkin Park’s Chester Bennington and has a wider range than Burton. Yes. He does and, yes, he probably has that. But what the fuck!?! Songs that where originally written for the new Fear Factory album shouldn’t be song by the guy from Linkin Park! And just because Ripper had a wider range than Halford, the magic wasn’t exactly created, was it?

And if you listen closely to the first track of ‘Years in the Darkness’, well, I’ll be damned, doesn’t that sound one hell of a lot like the Danish band Mnemic who in the first place cloned Fear Factory (a cool clone, but still)? The whole thing becomes a bit of a parody, doesn’t it?

Anything that has Raymond Herrera behind the drums is in my ears guaranteed a rhythm that goes like clockwork, and of course that’s in place on this album (listen to the song Awakening – fucking hell!), but apart from that, the feeling I’m left with is one of indifference although everything in me tells me that this is good musicianship.

‘Years in the Darkness’ doesn’t have the indefinable ‘it’. Simple as that.