Expiration Date

Album: Genexus (2015)
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Songfacts®:

  • Best known as a heavy metal band, Fear Factory surprised fans by featuring an electronic rock sound with all clean vocals on "Expiration Date," the closing track of Genexus. Vocalist Burton C. Bell told Rolling Stone: "I'm a big fan of melodic rock bands like U2 and even Sisters of Mercy and I've always integrated that influence into our music. It's funny because back when we first started, people heard this crazy death metal with screaming and then these clean vocals and they went, 'What the f--k is this?' They hated it."

    "Then later, kids who were too young to know us in 2000 heard us and thought we were ripping off Killswitch Engage, so you can't win. With Genexus we didn't want to do away with the melodic vocals, so we approached every song in a new way and used a combination of growls, melodic screams and clean singing. For 'Expiration Date' the music just didn't call for death metal vocals at all."
  • Genexus is a concept album foretelling a world where technology has evolved to such an extent that the differentiation between human and machine becomes invisible. This poignant song represents the moment in the story when the machines realize they have an expiration date and there's nothing they can do about it. Bell explained: "Everything comes to an end, even for machines. That is the one true thing in life: There is death. And it will happen to everything, including machines. That is something the machines are grappling with, just like humans try to grasp the concept of death. And maybe that makes them more human when they are trying to understand death."
  • The video was filmed with director Tommy Jones, who has also worked with Soilwork, Lamb of God and Testament, among others.

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