Fear Campaign

Album: Mechanize (2010)
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Songfacts®:

  • Regarding this song's message, vocalist Burton C. Bell explained in a behind-the-scenes clip for the video: "Lies, deception. It's all part of how the government works, how authority figures work, how the church works. It's all based upon fear - they want you to be scared. It's all a tactic of control."
  • On previous albums, Fear Factory was noted for their science fiction based lyrical focus. However on Mechanize, the band adopted a more factual approach to their lyrics based on their view of the world today.

    Burton C. Bell said: "In the past, the lyrical concept was of a futuristic, 'sci-fi' nature. An attempt to protect the ideas and logic of those involved in Fear Factory; because those who incite progressive thought are always chastised and persecuted. By placing the 'story' into a futuristic, fictional narrative, the words and ideas may not have seemed threatening. Not so for Mechanize. These are the words of a reality that once seemed distant, that are now apparently, and evidently real. These are the words of the world in which we live; for what once seemed like a story of another time, has come to be our reality today. Welcome to the world of Mechanize."
  • The lyrical content of this song, which served as Mechanize's second single, illustrates Fear Factory's new more straightforward approach. Said Bell: "It was not necessary to camouflage the insanity of the world of today within a science fiction setting. The world today has become the world that writers predicted long ago. The controlling authorities are constantly, and successfully, utilizing the fear tactic to control the masses, through misinformation and distraction. Fear is bondage. Fear is slavery. Fear is Hell. Fear is control."
  • The video was written and directed by the Boston team of McFarland & Pecci (Ian McFarland and Mike Pecci). In our interview with Pecci, he explained: "Burton wanted us to do something with a society being controlled by somebody, and then we went through the whole religious, Nazi, sort of thing. It was a lot of fun to play with both of those, because government and religion are just mind control devices and we really wanted to sell that. And since the whole campaign for that was the Fear Campaign - it was that you were being manipulated and that you were being controlled - it was the right way to go."

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