Fear Factory - Soul of a New Machine

It's hard to believe its been 13 years since this came out. When SoaNM was released, the death metal glut was in full swing, and every band either sounded like Obituary, Morbid angel, or Deicide. Every band was either on Nuclear Blast or Roadrunner (Relapse pretty much sucked back than) and production courtesy or Scott Burns. Lets not forget the obligatory Dan Seagrave cover. Than FF came out with a shit kicker of a record and nothing was the same. Yes, I like this band, a lot. But, taken in context, Soul was an extremely unique record for its time. Pretty much inventing the staccato guitar/drums lock down, what separated Soul from the rest was the death growl/clean vocal dichotomy. No band at the time was doing it, although its become standard practice now. Soul of a New Machine differed from their following release as they were still incorporating a lot of grind and hints of Godflesh. In my opinion, Fear Factory changed the entire scheme of things when this sucker dropped and claimed a sound all their own that you really could duplicate without being tagged clones. An essential release in my book. as a footnote, Roadrunner released a remastered version recently that sounds the freakin same, so other than the liner notes, stick with the original if you got it.