Former Fear Factory frontman has opened up on what it was like supporting Ozzy Osbourne in the mid-90s – and a special Black Sabbath event in Birmingham. Speaking to the Everblack Podcast, Bell admitted the industrial metal band had their work cut out for them.
“Fear Factory had been opening for Ozzy already on his Retirement Sucks tour, which was, like, ’96,” Burton explains. “We did three months throughout the United States and Europe. And Europe was fucking tough, because we were the only opening band and all those people in Europe, they didn’t wanna see us. They just wanted to see Ozzy. So they were literally just standing there watching us.
“After every one of our shows, they just threw shrapnel up — coins. And I collected enough coins to buy a beer. It was worth it. I got spat on a lot.”
It wasn’t all bad, though. Bell also recalls rubbing shoulders with a couple of music legends side-stage as Sabbath performed. “Henry Rollins was there, and I’m standing next to this tall dude,” Bell says. “I’m looking up, [and] I’m like, ‘It’s fucking Brian May! Holy fuck.”
Fear Factory clearly had their admirers in Sabbath, too. In 2024, bassist Geezer Butler explained his admiration for the group, and how Bell ended up singing on his 1995 album Plastic Planet.
“I really liked Fear Factory at the time and I’d been writing all this stuff that was too heavy for Sabbath or Ozzy [Osbourne],” he told Knotfest. “Pedro [Howse, guitarist], my nephew, had this band called Crazy Angel, who were like an ultra-thrash band. So when me and him got writing together it came out ultra-heavy, and I wasn’t restricted to what lyrics I was going to write about.
“A lot of it is about science fiction – a bit like what’s going on now with the AI stuff and everything.”
Bell announced his departure from Fear Factory in September 2020, though he had already completed vocals for the album Aggression Continuum, which was released on June 18 2021. In February 2023, Fear Factory announced they had recruited Milo Silvestro as their new vocalist.