Interviews

Burton C Bell - 'Heavy, Groovy, Dark and Moody Down Under'

Duane James

Dad. Metal Bogan. Duane's World.

Jun 3, 2025

8 min read

This month, Burton C Bell will honour our great country. For it is Australia that has been chosen by the iconic singer to be the proving grounds for the next chapter of his musical career. With bands Fear Factory and Ascension of The Watchers, Bell helped forge a sound that influenced generations of musicians, while developing an identity as a performer that earned him a spot in the Metal Hall of Fame this past January.

Heavy, Groovy, Dark and Moody.

That’d be bloody right!

After having spent more than thirty years listening to the music of Burton C Bell, the man who sang about, amongst other things, the evils of technology, I finally got to have a chat with the legend ahead of his upcoming solo tour of Australia this June and, as if by some sort of prophetic inevitability, my reliance on technology slaps me in the face as my zoom’s sound function goes ahead and shits itself.

Not to fret. One quick “turn it on and off again” later and we’re off to the races, talking about Burton’s long standing history with Australia, tattoos, Frankies Pizza’s legacy, his induction into the Metal Hall of Fame, Skynet, Black Sabbath, his musical mantra moving forward and getting knocked out in Melbourne.

But most importantly we discuss the launch of his upcoming solo tour and why he’s chosen Australia to be the proving grounds for the next chapter of his musical career.

Watch the interview or read on...

For him to kickstart this next stage of his musical career on our soil, well we should be extremely flattered. The man could have chosen anywhere on the planet that has electricity to plug in and play. But given his 30+ year relationship with Australian fans, including the five month stint he spent living here during the pandemic, its more than fitting and a particularly poignant that he launch his solo career on the continent he ever so briefly called home.

"I've spent a fair amount of time in Sydney back during the pandemic actually. I was like five months there. It was great. We were staying in Sydney, [in] god, water... Waterford?” [Waterloo, I think. The irony being, he couldn’t escape if he wanted to. No? Any Abba fans out there? Anyway] Directly across the road from us was a big golf course and I could walk to the Oval, which is about a half mile away.

Somehow in amongst the lockdowns, Bell managed to fit in a sneaky DJ set that was a special treat for fans, some of them travelling hours to see the great man.

Well, that's when I was staying there. It was like the pandemic. So I had my friend [Jordan McDonald] at Frankie's hook me up with a DJ set, and that was a lot of fun.

Still, after more than two years since it’s closure, the name Frankies still holds a place in the hearts of music fans the world over. Plus it sounds like Burton will be spending a wee bit more time in Australia after the tour to catch up with some old friends, including his old Frankies buddy.

Jordan McDonald. I'm going to make sure I contact him before I get down there and hopefully have some time afterwards or before. We'll see. But I do plan on staying a little bit longer after the tour, so maybe we can get back to Sydney. Our tour ends in Melbourne, so I might be hanging out in that area.

2025 is shaping up to be a big year for Bell. On top of kickstarting his solo jaunt, he was also awarded his spot in the Metal Hall of Fame, alongside Dimebag Darrell (Pantera, Damageplan) and Rikki Rockett (Poison) amongst others.

That was cool, man. It was super cool and very unexpected.

Obviously it great to be recognised for the contribution I made to music. It's awesome.

Given that Bell has a Hall of Fame back catalogue spanning more than three decades, not to mention his new solo material, it’ll be interesting to see how his setlist will shape up.

There's going to be a l a lot of my new songs I'll be playing. But like you said, I have 30 years worth of catalogue from various entities. Not just Fear Factory, but the Watchers, City of Fire, GZR. So I'll be cherry picking from these places. So I have a mantra.

I've created this mantra for myself, to really find how I'm moving forward in my next chapter of my career. And that's HEAVY, GROOVY, DARK AND MOODY. If it fits that criteria, that's what I want to play, no matter what band I'll be pulling from.

But there's something else that I'll be doing is that I have two guitar players now and I don't have a keyboard player. So there'll be two guitar players, bass player and drummer, and myself

So I am evolving these songs to fit my evolution. They're not going to sound exactly like Fear Factory, except I'll be singing it. I'm going to interpret it in my new style. It's still heavy. I’m going to keep it along that groovy narrative, and yeah, everything's going to be live.

As a fan of the local stoner rock and doom scene here in Sydney and having listened to Bell's latest songs ‘Anti-Droid’ and ‘Technical Exorcism’, this style of music wouldn’t be out of place at the likes of a Sunburn Festival or local doom night. Given Bell’s unmistakable industrial sound, his new musical direction and mantra moving forward, I suggested that you could almost label it all as Tech-Doom.

Tech Doom. That’s good.

And that his new Mantra could be a t-shirt.

‍HEAVY, GROOVY, DARK AND MOODY? Oh, it is. I've created that t-shirt. That’s on the back. So Heavy, Groovy, Dark, is in white print, and Moody is in Moody Blue print. It's like a dark blue print. I’ll definitely have that shirt down there. But I'm picking songs from early tracks that I've always loved and I think, to me was like, when Fear Factory started, this was what I was really pushing for and that's what I was really into. So you'll hear some classics.

Now that Burton C. Bell is an independent artist, free of the shackles and expectations that come with being on a label or being part of a band as recognisable as Fear Factory, it makes one wonder what sort of approach Bell will take to songwriting and what direction his music will take. Will he intentionally go in a particular sonic direction or will he simply produce what comes out of him organically and mould those ideas.

Well, I'm doing the latter, not the former. I'm not going to be putting myself into a certain genre. We're just going to be writing songs that fit that mantra of heavy, groovy, dark, and moody. If it sounds good, we're going to make it happen. But yeah, the new songs I've been writing with the band, 'Anti-Droid' and 'Technical Exorcism' were written before I had a band together.

Alex Chrescioni wrote 'Anti-Droid' for me, and then I wrote 'Technical Exorcism'. I had Big Paul Ferguson [Killing Joke] play drums on it, and I had Norman Westberg [Swans] play guitar on it, but it was after that I started really developing, almost curating this band together and the two new songs that will be coming out, hopefully before I reach Australia, were written with a band. It sounds more cohesive. It sounds really like a band together, and I'm really happy with the guys I have.

We're all just stoked to be coming over and blowing it up over in Australia, just having a great time and just rocking.

Bell has already spent a fair amount of time down under. The 5 month stint during covid aside, Fear Factory were one of the rare bands that played at three Big Day Outs. Throw the countless other tours in and you’d have to have some fond memories of Australia.

Well, one thing I do always remember about going to Australia is that the fans are always receptive, very supportive, and they come out and support the bands they love. I hope they continue to do that, especially with, I'm an independent artist now, and having their support would mean the world to me, and it would also be the best support I could have for this tour.

A memory just came into my mind as I was talking about that. It was our very first tour, very first time ever going down there was probably late 93. I think we were playing Melbourne, some small venue. It was some pub or I can't remember what it was called. It was a small venue, stage was only a foot and a half off the floor where the fans were. So the fans were literally in my face.

There was this one fellow up front and he was having a great time. I was having a great time and I was young, I was thrashing around and I was head headbanging as I was singing. And this young guy was also headbanging as I was singing, and he was right in front of me and at one point our heads just like, bam, my skull hit his skull. I saw a flash and the next thing I remember, I'm waking up on my back. Dino's above me going 'Burt, you okay? You okay? You okay?' I'm like, 'what?' Got knocked unconscious by an Australian fan of my first tour. He was very apologetic, obviously.

Just goes with the territory. Ever since then, I managed to stay at least a little bit from the people head banging right in front of me. I do love being right in people's faces. I love it when there's no barricade and you're just there and just engaging with everyone. You just high five and slap people and punch people and you feel their sweat spraying all over you. That's a lot of fun.

Throughout his career, Bell has written about the doom and gloom of technology. One such story was the science fiction tale Conception 5, a sensationalised man v machine narrative set in 2076 that was was used as the central storyline in the Fear Factory album Obsolete. Now, over 25 years later, with the rampant use of AI, it's impact on the world, plus with the weaponisation of religion and corporatism, we’re starting to see stories like Bells unfold in real time. After writing about it for his entire career, is he at all surprised to see it all happening?

No, I'm not. I saw that as an observer of the world and as a writer and a person who loves science fiction, I learned how these science fiction writers observe the world and how they were able to write about their current time, but see it just a little bit further in the future. But even writing Obsolete [and] Conception 5, I saw that happening then, honestly.

When it comes to AI, and there's a great, I know he was a writer, but he was just a genius in general. His name was Rick Herz. Well wrote a book called The Age of the Spiritual Machine. And in that he concluded that technology, the evolution of technology, it evolves exponentially. So what we know of AI two years ago has grown exponentially since then. So it's probably a hundred fold times more faster and more evolved than it was two years ago.

And at some point, AI is going to start reproducing. It's going to start creating itself. It's going to start creating its own businesses. It's going to start creating its own networks. So Skynet, what James Cameron wrote about Skynet coming around Skynet, that was actually supposed to be happening in 2027. ‍

Yeah that's not scary at all, but it does ask the big question. Let’s say AI does take over, we’re staring down the barrel of annihilation and our only salvation is that we get on a great big spaceship and leave Earth. But here’s the conundrum that lays before us... You’re only allowed to take one Black Sabbath album with you. Which one is it, and why?

I would take Sabotage. I think all the records before that are fucking great. But something about that, and every song in that record, just resonated with me. It's perhaps because it was the very first Sabbath record I listened to back to back and listening to it, I was like, holy fuck. This whole record just smokes. Every song, just smokes and the words and the intensity of the music, and it just sounds amazing. It's just like everything about Black Sabbath all into one. I even, I actually did a version of a 'Symptom of the Universe', but what I did was I took the breakdown part, that do-do-ba-doodle-do-do-doo! I looped that, put a fucking killer beat underneath it and made that the entire song.

FUUUUCK!!!! How cool is that? With any luck we’ll get to hear it for the first time when he lands on these hallowed shores from June 11th for what is shaping up to be a historic tour. For Burton C Bell to showcase the next stage in his musical voyage for the very first time to us, we should be deeply honoured. This tour is definitely going down as one not to miss. Especially since we may very well have to grab our Black Sabbath records and get on a great big spaceship afterwards. See you onboard.

Interview by Duane James @duanejamestattoo

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