Released: July 28, 1998
Fear Factory had already learned how to make guitars and drums move as one mechanism. On Obsolete, they use that precision to describe a future in which mechanisms have taken control. That creates the album’s central question: how does a band built around machine-like playing make humanity sound worth fighting for?
Released by Roadrunner Records in 1998, the album features Burton C. Bell, guitarist Dino Cazares, bassist Christian Olde Wolbers, and drummer Raymond Herrera, working again with Rhys Fulber on production, keyboards, and programming. Greg Reely recorded the album and provided additional production. Bell also wrote “Conception 5,” the story printed inside the booklet. Set in 2076, it follows a human rebel called Edgecrusher through an uprising against Securitron and the machines enforcing its rule.
The story gives the songs a destination, but the playing does most of the world-building. Cazares used a seven-string guitar tuned down to A, while Olde Wolbers moved to five-string bass. “Shock” locks short guitar bursts to Herrera’s kick drums, leaving narrow openings for Bell’s bark. “Smasher/Devourer” stretches that method across a longer arrangement, repeatedly stopping and restarting as though the machine named in the title is scanning for its target.
Obsolete also gives the rhythm section more room to move. “Edgecrusher” opens with Olde Wolbers playing upright bass before dropping into a thick, bouncing groove. DJ Zodiac’s scratching and Bell’s near-spoken delivery give the song some obvious late-1990s fingerprints, but Herrera keeps it tied to Fear Factory’s core sound. The bass can move around the beat because the drums keep pulling everything back into line.
Bell prevents the concept from becoming metal science-fiction wallpaper. His harsh voice fits the commands, surveillance, and violence surrounding Edgecrusher. His clean singing reveals the frightened person underneath. “Descent” comes at the point where constant resistance has begun to wear him down. Cazares lets the chords ring longer, Fulber fills the background with cold keyboard tones, and Bell opens the chorus into a question. For a few minutes, the revolutionary stops sounding like a symbol and starts sounding exhausted.
The title track shows the other side of the conflict. Gary Numan’s spoken voice introduces the machine’s conclusion while the band pounds through a blunt, repetitive stomp. There is no debate left in the arrangement. Humanity has been judged obsolete, and the riff sounds like the sentence being enforced.
“Resurrection” briefly challenges that certainty. Chamber strings widen the chords while Bell reaches for one of the album’s largest clean melodies. The song’s scale comes from the space around his voice and the gradual growth of the arrangement. Hope enters the album through melody, yet the story never promises that hope will be enough.
It isn’t. “Timelessness” removes the usual guitar-and-drum machinery and leaves Bell surrounded by keyboards and strings as Edgecrusher faces capture. After an album dominated by exact rhythmic patterns, the exposed ending sounds almost uncomfortably human. There is no final attack, escape, or heroic speech.
So how does Fear Factory make humanity worth fighting for? Through Bell’s clean voice. Cazares, Herrera, and Olde Wolbers build a world that runs on repetition, while “Descent,” “Resurrection” and “Timelessness” keep exposing the frightened person caught inside it. Edgecrusher loses, and the album ends with Bell, keyboards, and strings because once the machinery has won, human loneliness is the only part of the story left to tell.
Written by Rob Joncas for DeadNoteMedia. Artist information and music courtesy of the band. © 2026 DeadNoteMedia. All rights reserved.
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