Fear Factory

The marriage of death metal muscle to industrial smarts might not be one you'd care to throw rice at, but you can't deny these two crazy kids make a handsomely bleak couple. Fear Factory is credited as being one of the first to witness this unholy union, with Soul of a New Machine in 1992. Four years after its 1998 breakthrough with a Top 100 album and a coveted slot on Ozzfest, the band split up temporarily. Founder and self-described "dry lung vocal martyr" Burton C. Bell quit, but the band soon re-formed around him in what now seems a transparent ploy to render guitarist and part-time Nailbomb-er Dino Cazares obsolete. Despite its recurrent theme of machines putting mankind on the scrap heap, the band continues to make humanist moves like covering Nirvana and U2, although it's up to you to decide whether Fear Factory singing "I Will Follow" constitutes man's triumph or capitulation.