Former FEAR FACTORY singer Burton C. Bell kicked off his Australian solo tour on Wednesday (June 11) at The Triffid in Brisbane. Fan-filmed video of the concert can be seen below.Last month, Burton shared the lyric video for his fourth solo single, “Savages”.In a recent interview with Andrew Haug, Bell spoke about his plans for new music after issuing two singles in 2024 — “Anti-Droid” and “Technical Exorcism” — and a cover of RAMMSTEIN’s “Du Hast” in 2023. He said:  ”Right now there’s no solo record planned. We’re just writing songs and releasing singles. When it comes to a point where we have enough songs to release a full-length, maybe an EP — we’ll choose which one — but if I can get some support and some funding to make that happen, I will definitely release a full-length. But at this point, we’re just writing songs and releasing ’em like hip-hop artists. It’s the hip-hop template where they would just drop songs, singles, just here and there along the way, and then they would eventually release the record.”I realized a while ago that when bands — mostly rock bands, other than hip-hop artists — when they released records, and they released a single before the record is dropped, and when the record dropped, there might have been another song, but the whole record gets lost by the wayside, just gone in the ether,” he explained. “So all that work is just lost. And I’m thinking, well, why don’t I just have people pay attention to one song at a time and then when we have enough songs we can release something and they can have ’em all together, plus some new stuff.”As for how the changes in the industry in the last three decades have affected his approach to putting out new music, Burton said: “One thing technology has been positive is that artists have been able to record their own music and release it on their own independently. The downside of that is there’s way more artists nowadays releasing music, so it’s harder to get noticed. But I am very fortunate and I’m grateful that I’ve had the 30-year career before this for people to see it already. They know my name already, so I’ve done the hard work. Now the harder work starts with dealing with social media.”Bell went on to say that there have been occasions where he felt limited by the musical restrictions of his former band. “Yeah, at various times,” he said, before clarifying: “Not just in the band, but in my life in general. I felt that I wanted to experiment more than anybody else did, and I just wanted to move out of the box that we created for ourselves.”Burton also acknowledged that going solo at this point in his career comes with its own set of obstacles. “It’s challenging, and is hard,” he explained. “But we don’t do things because they’re easy; we do things because they are hard. And that creates the challenge. And I do feel that freedom. And that freedom is a sense of — I have a sense that I can go in any direction I feel. I can write any type of song I would like to write and I can go in any direction I wanna go. As long as I stay true to myself in creating music that I would love to hear, I think other people would love to hear it as well.”Bell played the first concert with his solo band on June 13, 2024 at 1720 in Los Angeles, California.Backing Bell at his recent gigs have been guitarist Henrik Linde (THE VITALS, DREN),drummer Ryan “Junior” Kittlitz (ALL HAIL THE YETI, THE ACID HELPS),bassist Tony Baumeister (ÆGES) and multi-instrumentalist Stewart Cararas.Bell’s discography includes multiple live and recorded collaborations with BLACK SABBATH icon Geezer Butler and JOURNEY’s Deen Castronovo (as G/Z/R); industrial maverick Al Jourgensen and MINISTRY; and guest vocal appearances with PITCHSHIFTER, CONFLICT, SOIL, STATIC-X, SOULFLY and DELAIN, among others. He’s the vocalist of ASCENSION OF THE WATCHERS and CITY OF FIRE and, of course, the co-creator of FEAR FACTORY and the only musician to appear on every FEAR FACTORY release from 1992 through 2024.FEAR FACTORY created a sound that revolutionized extreme metal, defined in no small part by Bell’s innovative scream/sing dichotomy and the influences he brought from post-punk and industrial. Songs like “Replica”, “Linchpin”, “Edgecrusher”, “Fear Campaign”, “Archetype”, “Cyber Waste” and “Zero Signal” are modern metal anthems. “Demanufacture” (1995) and the RIAA gold-certified “Obsolete” (1998) are genre-redefining works heralded by fans and critics as essential albums. Orwell, Bradbury, “Blade Runner”, and sophisticated sci-fi and fantasy works fed Bell’s lyrics and concepts.The band toured the world with METALLICA, SLIPKNOT, KORN, MEGADETH and OZZY OSBOURNE, taking bands like SYSTEM OF A DOWN and STATIC-X out as support acts in their early stages. After years of behind-the-scenes band member turmoil and legal issues, Bell left FEAR FACTORY in the fall of 2020.The 56-year-old Bell had been largely inactive on the musical front since officially announcing his departure from FEAR FACTORY in September 2020. At the time he said that he could not “align” himself with someone whom he did not trust or respect, an apparent reference to FEAR FACTORY founding guitarist Dino Cazares. Bell has since been replaced in the band by the Italian-born singer Milo Silvestro.In early May, Burton reflected on his decision to leave FEAR FACTORY in September 2020 after a 31-year run as the band’s singer and pursue a solo career. He told the Post-Punk.TV podcast:  ”It was time for me to do other things. And here I am. Venturing out on my own is scary. Doing something solo is frightening. I’m, like, ‘Am I doing the right thing?’ As artists, we always question ourselves. [We hear] voices in our head. There’s voices in my head that are, like, ‘Oh my God. What the fuck are you doing?’ But I’ve gotta follow my heart because my heart is directing me towards a path that I truly wanna be in, and that’s the artistic path.”Bell continued: “Failure is something that, as artists, we experience on a daily basis. But you just can’t let that failure dictate your life. You have to learn from it. And once you learn from that, it’s, like, ‘Okay, I did that wrong. This time I’ll try it this way. And so I am moving forward with my solo career, writing music that, for me, fits my mantra.”I came up with a mantra maybe a couple years ago,” Burton added. “Now that I have a [solo] band that I’m working with on a daily basis, they have grown to understand me as well. And so this next [solo] song I’m about to release called ‘Savages’ on May 30th, we wrote together as a band. And it fits my mantra, which is ‘heavy, groovy, dark and moody’. And I think that fits every aspect that I wanna do. It fits the criteria of every band that I’ve ever liked. I think it fits the criteria of every band I’ve been a part of. So what I’m doing now is an amalgamation of everything I’ve ever done. I’m taking it all, creating this nice little piece, and I’m releasing it, making something new for myself. And I think when people hear this new song ‘Savages’, and the next song, which is called ‘Cold Lazarus’, they [will be], like, ‘Wow, that sounds familiar, but it’s kind of new.’ So it’s, like, there you go. That’s what we’re doing.”Burton went on to say: “So I’m super excited about the future. I’m super excited about my tour coming up in June, going to Australia, and just very excited for what the future holds. I’m just staying creative. That’s what it’s all about. Being an artist is being creative, and creating art, whether it’s writing music or photography, you’re expressing yourself through your visions and from what you see and how the world affects you.”[embedded content][embedded content][embedded content][embedded content][embedded content][embedded content]