Burton C. Bell

Burton Christopher Bell is an American musician. Bell is best known as the frontman of the metal band Fear Factory where he is the only consistent member.^[1] His singing style mixes clean vocals with death growls.

Career

Fear Factory

Prior to his role in Fear Factory, Bell performed with Hate Face. In 1989, he joined guitarist Dino Cazares and drummer Raymond Herrera to form the band Ulceration, which later changed its name to Fear Factory during the 1990s. The group recorded four studio albums before Fear Factory disbanded temporarily in 2002 due to infighting between Bell and Cazares. The band reformed later that year with Christian Olde Wolbers switching from bass to guitar and Byron Stroud on bass. This line-up recorded two albums. During the following period of inactivity within the band, Cazares and Bell patched up their differences, and in 2009 decided to re-form Fear Factory excluding Herrera and Olde Wolbers, whom had since formed the band Arkaea. Drummer Gene Hoglan was recruited to complete the new line-up.

Burton C. Bell is the only member to have appeared on every Fear Factory release.

Ascension of the Watchers

After Fear Factory's hiatus in 2005, Bell went on to form Ascension of the Watchers with John Bechdel at Bechdel's studio in Mifflinburg, PA. The Watchers released an online only selling EP entitled Iconoclast in 2005. In October 2006, Burton announced via the Ascension of the Watchers website, "I have had to focus on Fear Factory for a while, but 2007 is all about Ascension of The Watchers." On February 19, Ascension of the Watchers released their first full length album Numinosum. This has kept Bell's hiatus with Fear Factory, allowing him to explore other veins of music.

Guest appearances

Bell has performed guest vocals on many records in addition to taking lead vocal duties for G/Z/R's Plastic Planet album released in 1995.^[2] Due to commitments with Fear Factory, Bell was not the vocalist for G/Z/R's second album, Black Science.

Burton recorded a track for UK metal band This Is Menace, the track was then cut out of the final edit from the album No End In Sight. Burton performed live in the encore segments of the Ministry 2008 Tour singing songs such as Stigmata, Thieves and So What taking over vocal duties from Al Jourgensen. Burton has joined with Byron Stroud to form City of Fire who released their debut album in August 2009.

Personal life

Bell and his wife have two daughters and a son. He has a fraternal twin brother, Ben, who is the singer of his own country band "Ben Bell and the Stardust Boy's". Ben is also a librarian. Burton is a photographer and writer when not on tour.

Bell was one of the young audience members in Nirvana's music video for "Smells Like Teen Spirit."^[3] Although there are only a few snippets of him in this video, Bell is most visible at 2:12 in the song. His favorite Fear Factory songs are "Shock" and "Resurrection".

Discography

All appearances are as a vocalist, unless mentioned otherwise.

References