Human Shields (Fear Factory guitar cover)

My rendition of Fear Factory's "Human Shields", from the 'Archetype' album (with a small bonus of a faux-bit of "Ascension" I added at the very end, since I love that segue/transition and track in general). I enjoy this banger of a song but admittedly probably not the most exciting as a guitar-only performance, however, if you want to use this to practice/jam along with using your drums/bass/vox/synth stuff, or even do a full-fledged collab - it would certainly work, so go for it! (albeit a touch faster than the studio album pace, but still consistent and workable enough for sure.) This was one of those spur-of-the-moment 1am recordings (which are always fun...and no, this was not meant as a 'political statement' regarding current events by any means, I had actually recorded this in late September, which was well before the fighting in everyone's favorite sandbox broke out...just merely a matter of convenient timing, and war in general is relevant to any place and any era...it's the human condition.). Weirdly enough, this was a bit more challenging than it should have been, getting those clean notes to ring clearly consistently was surprisingly an issue. I arranged it my own way for an A-tuned (A D G C F A D) 7-string, put the clean notes on the lower frets/thinner strings, but then moved the distorted riffs to the thicker strings/upper frets to give them a bit more 'ooomph'...worked out pretty well for the most part. Ideally, I would have used a bit more chorus effect for the clean riffs, but couldn't since they would then become too 'wobbly' (think Leslie effect), and I didn't want that either, so I used as much as I could before it morphed into 'too wobbly'. Anyway, enjoy as always and thanks for watching!

[@ahenn84]

A bonus side-story: This is the first Fear Factory song I've done that occurred after 'my time' with them...I listened to them a lot in high school (late '90's/early '00's...'Demanufacture'-'Obsolete'-'Digimortal' will always be my personal 'holy trinity' of their albums.), and then in 2002 they broke up, I was like "Well, that's a bummer." and I basically lost all track of them at that point...I had HEARD they reformed, but thought "it won't be the same" (since it was a different line-up) and I never bothered to give anything after 'Digimortal' a shot until Fall of '21 when I broke out my 7-string and started getting back into Fear Factory stuff in general. I must admit, I DO feel like I sort of missed out with at least the 'Archetype' album though, quite a few bangers and a solid album overall (I can certainly see why people rank it highly in the FF catalog)...now, everything else after 'Archetype'? - maaaaaybe not so much...I can't lie, a lot of it sort of went through one ear and out the other for me...however, there are a few stand-outs which I might eventually cover, such as "Echo of My Scream" and "Final Exit", now THOSE are some memorable tracks! I'll most likely eventually do a few more from 'Archetype' as well, such as the title track and 'Bite the Hand that Bleeds.'

[@SpaceWolfHudson]

Final Exit is one of my absolute favourites! :D Mechanize was the first record I heard from Fear Factory and got me into them. Though meanwhile Demanufacture and Oboslete are the ones I have listened to the most, I had a very hard fan boy phase for every record from mechanize onwards too :D

[@KatjaSavia]

Perfectly played Andrew 🔥🔥

[@ahenn84]

Thank you much Katja, always appreciated!