Words by: Annette Geneva
Photos by: Peter Mellows
It looked like a regular Hobart night until you reached Liverpool Street. Then suddenly – hundreds of metal fans wrapped around The Odeon, black shirts and battle jackets glowing with patches beneath streetlights, waiting patiently for the doors to open. Tasmania’s biggest heavy music export, Psycroptic, were on the bill. Fear Factory were about to celebrate thirty-five years of machine-made fury. The excitement was already spilling onto the footpath.
For a city that often feels sleepy after dark, it was an unusual sight. A reminder that heavy music has always had a home here.
Before Fear Factory even hit the stage, Psycroptic had already reminded everyone why they’re one of the most respected death metal bands in the world. Psycroptic’s set was a masterclass in technical precision, the Haley brothers leading a performance so tight it felt engineered. For a band that started in Hobart and went on to conquer international festivals and tours across Europe, there was something special about seeing them back on home soil, warming up an Odeon crowd that was ready for every blast beat and impossible riff.
Celebrating 35 years of mechanical rage, the industrial metal pioneers rolled into Hobart on their first Australian headline run in a decade, and first time in Tasmania – dragging the setlist through three decades of cybernetic paranoia and enough riffs to level a small suburb.
The turnout was ridiculous. Maybe the biggest crowd I’ve ever seen at the Odeon. There was this strange buzz before they even walked on stage, the kind that makes you realise half the room has been carrying these songs around in their bloodstream for decades. The all-ages crowd gave it another layer too. Teenagers discovering Fear Factory in real time stood shoulder to shoulder with people who probably bought Demanufacture on CD the first time around. Nobody looked interested in acting cool. A rare and beautiful thing.
The set itself was stacked with fan favourites and some deeper cuts that have been absent for years. Recent shows on the tour have featured songs like Industrial Discipline and Invisible Wounds, tracks that long time fans never expected to hear again, and Hobart got the benefit of that same adventurous spirit.
Slave Labor landed early and immediately turned the floor into a boiling mass of limbs. Archetype hit like an old friend with steel-cap boots. By the time Industrial Discipline arrived, the room had tipped into full machine revolt. There was so much head banging I briefly wondered if Hobart’s chiropractors were tracking ticket sales.
And then they belted out Edgecrusher. The reaction was absurd. People weren’t just singing along. They were launching entire sections of lyrics back at the stage. The mosh pit was as enthusiastic as it could ever be for a band of Fear Factory’s caliber.
Descent somehow raised the temperature even further. Nobody dared relax. Not for a second. The newer line-up continues to prove itself live. Dino Cazares remains the architect of the whole operation, firing out those impossibly tight machine-gun riffs, while vocalist Milo Silvestro has settled into the material with confidence. Instead of trying to imitate the past, he attacks the songs with his own energy, and the results are convincing as hell.
One of my favourite moments came during Linchpin a track from Digimortal that sounded absolutely enormous in the Odeon. Recognition rippled through the room. You could almost see people turning to their friends with that look that says, wait… they’re actually playing this?
By the time Replica, Zero Signal, and Resurrection rolled around, the crowd had fully surrendered. No posturing. No phones in the air every thirty seconds. Just hundreds of people yelling words back at the band.
Cars was another highlight. Fear Factory’s industrial-metal reinterpretation of the Gary Numan classic remains one of the greatest heavy music covers and hearing an entire room sing along to it felt strangely emotional amid all the mechanical destruction.
My favourite moment wasn’t even Fear Factory. It was the space between the bands.
Hundreds of metalheads standing beneath the Odeon’s 110 old theatre ceiling, singing along to Semi-Charmed Life and Natasha Bedingfield’s Unwritten at full volume as if their lives depended on it. The contrast was perfect. One minute industrial discipline, machine precision and dystopian futures. The next, a room full of people in black screaming “Feel the rain on your skin…” with absolute sincerity. That’s the thing about heavy music crowds that people get wrong. Beneath all the noise and aggression is always the biggest heart in the room. And metal music fans are often the friendliest people you can ever meet at a show.
Fear Factory have always been a band obsessed with the conflict between human and machine, but what stood out in Hobart was the opposite. For ninety minutes, everything felt intensely human. Sweat, noise, nostalgia, bruised necks, strangers screaming lyrics together. And honestly, if you weren’t singing along to “I Don’t Want To Live That Way” by the end, you were probably in the wrong factory.
GALLERY
PSYCROPTIC
FEAR FACTORY
