Interview to Mike Heller of Fear Factory

Interview by Luis Landeo
Hello Mike is for me a real pleasure to do an interview with you, you are the drummer of Fear Factory, how is for you play with Burton c Bell and Dino Cazares? and what are the new surprises have Fear Factory for this year?
It’s a pleasure for me too!  Playing with Fear Factory has been a great experience for me, and it is so much fun to play with a band that I grew up listening to.  If you would have told me when I was 13 years old that I would be playing with Fear Factory one day, I would never have believed it!  This year we are going to release a new album, and we will be very busy touring all over the world.

Some people will want to know how was you called to be the drummer of Fear Factory? 

In 2012 Fear Factory were trying out many drummers, and having trouble finding the right one.  Shaun Glass from Broken Hope and The Bloodline, who is a very good friend to Fear Factory was trying to help them find a drummer.  He contacted Corey and Nick from Trivium to ask if they had any recommendations, and they told him about me.  Shaun then contacted me at home in New York and asked me to make a video of the song “Fear Campaign”.  I had never heard that song before, so I started listening to it and learning it.  Two hours later I sent Shaun a video of myself playing the song.  The next morning I got a phone call from Dino, who asked me to learn “Zero Signal” and “Linchpin”, and told me that they would fly my to Los Angeles to audition.  The day after that I was in Los Angeles auditioning for the band.  John Sankey (Devolved, The Devil You Know) was there to help during the drummer auditions because he knows all of the parts, and he had just helped to program the drums for “The Industrialist” album, which was finished, but not released yet.  So after the audition I stayed in Los Angeles for the night, and then flew home to New York the next morning.  When I landed in New York, my friend Gavin Parsons (Whitechapel) picked me up from the airport, and as we were driving away from the airport, Dino called me and told me that I got the gig!  So I went back home, packed all of my stuff, and then Gavin drove me to the airport the next day to fly back to Los Angeles for rehearsals.  Two weeks later we were on tour, and I played my first show with Fear Factory in Chile. Without Shaun, Corey, Nick, Sankey and Gavin I would not be playing with Fear Factory!

In 2012 Fear Factory played in a mini southamerican tour, Fear Factory played in Argentina and the gillmanfest in Venezuela What do you think about the South American Scene? and Fear Factory have in mind return to southamerica and visit and play again in this part of the continent? and how was for you play in Gillmanfest?

I absolutely love the South American scene!  The fans are so passionate about music, and it is always amazing to play there.  I think that South America is possibly the most metal continent in the world! Fear Factory is definitely going to be playing in South America, and hopefully Argentina again as soon as possible.  Gillmanfest was an amazing festival!  It was so much fun to play for so many excited people, and everybody was very nice and helpful to us foreigners!

I would like to know if Fear Factory will work in a new full lenght? and if is working in a new one, how goes the recording days?

Yes, the new full-length album is almost done! I recorded all of the drums in two days at NRG Studios in Los Angeles.  It was a lot of fun!  Burton is just finishing up his vocals for the album in the next few days, and then it will go to mixing/mastering.

In the last Fear Factory album Dino Cazares programmed the drums, but how difficult was for you difficult play the drums of the songs of last album in live? (you know is the man vs the machine)

Actually, the songs from “The Industrialist” are much more difficult to play than any of the other Fear Factory songs.  The drum program did not need arms and legs to play those parts, but I am only human, so I can only try my best to play them.  Man vs. machine, but on that album, the machine won!  

I would like to know is how you manage your time for play in many bands? and how can you remember all the beats of the song of your bands? I bet is difficult?

Managing my time is very difficult!  Fear Factory keeps me on tour a lot of the time, but as soon as we get off tour, I try to go back home to New York and play with my other bands.  I’ve been in Malignancy for almost 12 years, and I love it so much that I will do whatever I have to do to be able to play with them!  We are almost finished writing the new album, and I’m very excited to record it!  I also have a band called We Of Worms that will be releasing some crazy music soon.  Those two bands are extremely complex and require all of my abilities to be able to play the songs.  I love complicated, challenging, super technical music!  I also love doing session work, and playing all sorts of different styles of music.  It is actually easy for me to remember those crazy parts because they are always changing and usually rhythmically complex.  It also helps that I wrote them myself!  Writing music is my favorite thing in the world to do, and it comes naturally, which makes it seem easy to remember when I play those parts again.  It is a lot harder for me to remember Fear Factory parts because I did not write them.

Well Mike, I wish you good luck, and do you any last words or message to your fans around the world?

To the fans, I hope that I will see you all very soon, and thank you so much for your support!  I am eternally grateful to you all!

To know more about Fear Factory:
https://www.facebook.com/fearfactory