Ascension of the Watchers
Numinosum
13th Planet
Soul of a new drum machine
Numinosum begins by quoting the movie Outland: “There’s a whole machine that works because everybody does what they’re supposed to. I found out I was supposed to be something I didn’t like. That’s what’s in the program. That’s my rotten little part in the rotten machine.” This soundbite is telling. Throughout his career in Fear Factory, Burton C. Bell has dealt with themes of man vs. machine. Here, the machine could be industry expectations. Bell was the pioneer of good cop/bad cop vocals, though from him they were more like angel/demon. His Gregorian chant-like singing was startlingly un-metal; unsurprisingly, he recently revealed, “I’ve never really considered myself a metal guy.”
Thus, he’s ditched metal for ambient goth/industrial. Ironically, Numinosum suffers from the same problems that plagued Fear Factory’s latest, Transgression—syrupy melodies, suffocation in reverb, lack of friction. John Bechdel, programmer for industrial metal heavies like Ministry and Prong, dials up shockingly lite sounds. The vaguely Celtic I-IV-V of “Moonshine” recalls Enya, “Like Falling Snow” reverts to Screamadelica-era Primal Scream, while “On the River” sets New Order to a reggaeton beat. Simon & Garfunkel’s “The Sounds of Silence” even gets Pink Floyd-esque treatment. Bell’s vocals are pleasingly sonorous, though perhaps due to layering; he has difficulty finding the pitch in the nakedly acoustic “Violent Morning.” Each song is two minutes too long, and there’s no reason the album should end with an instrumental, five minutes of vinyl noise and a hidden ditty of old-time music. However, this project has possibilities, which is perhaps more than can be said for Fear Factory at this point. —Cosmo Lee
