Fear Factory | GENEXUS | CD

Personnel: Giuseppe Bassi (keyboards, programming, sampler); Damien Rainaud (keyboards); Mike Heller (drums).Audio Mixer: Andy Sneap.Editors: Damien Rainaud; Matt Jefferson; Geoff Bisente.On 2012's The Industrialist, Fear Factory offered up a pseudo-sci-fi/apocalypse-driven conceptual album that hit all of the right notes (with extreme prejudice) but did very little in the way of updating the seminal decibel-pushers' relentlessly precision-based brand of industrial metal. Genexus, the group's ninth studio long-player and first outing for Nuclear Blast, largely follows suit, but the inclusion of a live drummer (Mike Heller) on a few key tracks signals that Fear Factory may be a little bit more willing to disengage themselves from the autopilot in the hopes of steering the ship into the sun (in a badass metal way) themselves. More melody-driven than prior outings, Genexus nevertheless retains the band's penchant for pairing bleak science fiction imagery with piston-like, palm-muted guita