MORGAN Y. EVANS: I like that you’ve taken risks with this album, Burton. I’ve always admired your belief in your own voice. I think heavy music tends to get conservative sometimes with limits in hardcore and metal on singing styles. There’s nothing wrong with some good growling but, I mean, you’ve always cited more risk-taking bands like Swans and Godflesh as your own bigger influences anyway, and you have such a strong and recognizable singing voice. Now you’ve made this great ambient album.

BURTON C. BELL: Very true. I knew going on from my history, or legacy that I’ve done, that this music I was writing was gonna flip people out. I was taking that risk because I’m basically following my heart and my true personality.

MYE: Right on. Well, you know, I’ve been a real fan of yours for years. I was listening to the Demanufacture remix album Remanufacture yesterday. You had the “Genetic Blueprint (New Breed)” remix on there by Junkie XL, or on other albums you had stuff like “Timelessness” from Fear Factory’s Obsolete or the killer song “Invisible Wounds (Dark Bodies)”. I think some of those were not as heavy as other stuff, but you’ve never been afraid of different textures.

BCB: Yeah. And that was my influence in Fear Factory, I guess, cuz I never wrote music in Fear Factory. They were always writing music, the other guys, and I just did the vocals and was just bouncing off what they were doing, adding lyrics, adding my sound and voice as an instrument later on. The only song that was initiated by me, pretty much, was “Timelessness” off Obsolete. Also, the only riff I ever wrote was the chorus riff on “Self Bias Resistor”.

MYE: That, by far, has always been my favorite song you guys ever did.

BCB: Thanks. It was a simple punk riff that I came up with and Dino (Cazares-ex Fear Factory guitarist, now of Divine Heresy) enhanced it a bit with a little bit more stuff but that progression was what I had come up with. Other than that, I didn’t write any music, but texture is something I really love in music. Orchestration and the combination of layering sounds and creating a whole different sound is what I’ve always enjoyed.

MYE: The instrumentation on Numinosum is great. “Moonshine” in particular stood out for me, and I like how stuff like “On The River” and “Evading” have these looped beats with almost, like, droning vocals. It kind of reminded me of…I’m sure you are familiar with, the work of Mick Harris in his band Scorn?

BCB: Absolutely! I love that band and that was a guy from early Napalm Death!

MYE: Who would’ve thought that would be what he ended up making if you’d only ever heard Napalm Death’s SCUM album!

BCB: Yeah. When the first Scorn record came out I loved it. Napalm Death was cool and all, but I was more into Industrial and, obviously, the post punk stuff, but I really liked what he was doing in Scorn. I was like, now you’re talking!

MYE: Yeah, man. So, I wanted to ask you about the live approach to Ascension of The Watchers. The first time I ever saw you perform was years ago with Fear Factory in NYC. It was at Tramps at a $3 make up date show for fans that you played with Kilgore. I was like, 17, and met you guys, and the show was sick. I saw you sound check “Shock” before it had any real lyrics! I mean, you’ve always been an intense performer, but this is a very different entity, so I was wondering how you are going to approach the live performances?

BCB: Well, we have a live band. There are only three actual members of The Watchers right now, but we’ve got a bass player and we’ve got a live drummer. So we aren’t gonna be playing to any tapes, but we’re gonna keep the feeling of the songs true. Being as it’s live, it’s gonna be more organic. It will mean a lot more sounds, and it’ll be a lot more powerful. It’s not gonna be a head banging show or a show with a pit, but to me, if people just stand there, that’s fine. If they just close their eyes and absorb it, that can be powerful too.

MYE: It’s interesting because Fear Factory had mechanized aspects but somehow managed to be chaotic, but with Ascension of The Watchers you’ve got something like “Violet Morning” which is so gentle. Is it strange onstage drawing from an almost vulnerable place when you are known more for blistering stuff?

BCB: Well, for awhile I was feeling a bit apprehensive, but I decided that I’m just gonna own it, because people can smell fear and this is where I wanna be. This is truly me and I’m gonna own it, so I’m not apprehensive anymore. I do understand that there’s gonna be disapproval of what I’m doing, and I’ve already gotten hate mail, but that’s fine. Everyone’s entitled to their opinion.

MYE: Well, it’s your career at the end of the day, buddy.

BCB: Totally. It’s my life.

MYE: Here’s kind of a long question. The title of the new record, Numinosum, means a spiritual dream that occurs from outside oneself. Some fans of your career might ask why this album has spiritual or religious themes, especially as it is being released by Al Jourgensen from Ministry’s 13th Planet. He’s known to have written songs like Ministry’s “Waiting” from Houses of the Mole, which criticized the religious right waiting for the Rapture, and Fear Factory, of course, had “Piss Christ”. It seems to me that those were more about religious hypocrisy than being against people having spiritual feelings, am I correct?

BCB: There was some hypocrisy involved, but in my early days I was Agnostic. I wasn’t atheist, and I wasn’t Christian. I did not know. I did not have any type of spiritual awakening at all. “Piss Christ” is a question.

MYE: Yeah, even the refrain at the end of the song.

BCB: Absolutely. Songs like “Smasher Devourer”, there’s the hypocrisy there. But as I’ve grown and had more years to myself, this record became my spiritual journey--not Christian and not religious, but a spiritual journey--finding the love within oneself and just realizing things outside. I’ve always loved science, and I’ve always loved astrology. Oh, astronomy I meant to say, not astrology.

MYE: (laughing) What’s your sign, Burton?

BCB: (laughing) I was born on the cusp of Pisces-Aquarius so I’m really crazy. But this was a truly spiritual journey. After finishing this, I’d come to realizations. I learned the term Numinosum when I had a dream in 2000.

MYE: That was where the cover image of the album, of a sort of glowing, burning tree came from, right?

BCB: That picture came later. This dream happened in 2000 and I remembered it vividly. I never had the dream again, but I wrote it down and I described it to a friend who is an expert in dream therapy. She’s a Jungian analyst. She described it to me as a Numinosum, and I was like, “Wow, that’s cool.” I remembered that this whole time. When Fear Factory momentarily dissolved in 2002, I came out to Pennsylvania to work on some new stuff, this Watchers stuff. I also started diving back into other aspects of my personality, like photography. I used to do photo a lot when I was a teenager, and I really got into it again. I did a couple series and a lot of nighttime shots in the fog. The cover shot was an actual photograph I took of a tree on the way back from (keyboardist/AoTW member) John Bechdel’s studio. It was behind this really incandescent type of lamp and had a sort of glow to it. I held the shutter open for about fifteen seconds and that’s all I did. I didn’t Photoshop it at all.

MYE: Really?

BCB: So I had that picture sitting around on a slide and I’d decided I wanted to use the name Numinosum as an album title. When it all came together I realized, “Wow, this is my dream. It’s what I saw in my dream.” That’s when the impact of my spiritual journey came to me, and I realized what I’ve been doing. It hadn’t been in vain and here I am. The dream came true.

MYE: Wow, that’s cool. Inside the CD I saw that fans can buy some of your pictures. I love the one on the CD insert of the riverfront. Where is that?

BCB: That is the town I live in, Milton, Pennsylvania. I’m looking North at the river and that was taken at one in the morning. It was cold and it was November.

MYE: That’s funny it is Pennsylvania because it almost reminded me of that long waterfront driving out of Philly.

BCB: Well, I’m only about two and a half hours away from there, actually. In that picture, you can’t see it unless you look hard, but there’s a sort of greenish light in the middle and that was my apartment right on the river. The songs “On the River” and “Moonshine” were written right there. Pretty much all the songs were written there.

MYE: I just wanted to tell you a quick story. I’m from Woodstock, NY where Fear Factory did the Demanufacture album. One of the coolest things that happened to me ever was, I was up at Bearsville Studios, the same studio you did that record, because my old band Fuse’s guitarist Damien Shannon worked there. He’s worked on Ween’s The White Pepper album and others. Anyway, Damien kind of snuck us in to track one time, back before the studio sadly closed down. And so I was in Studio B one day in the vocal booth and I saw some tiny graffiti in there that said "BCB '94"!

BCB: (laughing hard) Wow! That’s classic!

MYE: Yeah, man! I was cutting vocals and I was a huge fan, and I was like, “No Way! This kicks ass! Look what I found, dudes!”

BCB: Recording there was fantastic back then. We spent a lot of time in Woodstock. A lot of great records were created at Bearsville. You live in Woodstock? Cool. Yeah, Fear Factory was hanging out in Bearsville and Woodstock all the time. There was a bar we’d hang out at. I had a great time recording that record. While we were there Faith No More was doing a record.

MYE: Must’ve been King For a Day, Fool For a Lifetime.

BCB: Yeah, that’s the one. And Bon Jovi was also there! I’ll tell you a funny story. Rhys Fulber (Front Line Assembly, Delirium) did the keyboards with us for that record. He was in the hallway on the phone and this guy walks by, and Rhys thought he was a runner, and he said,”Hey man, can you get a sandwich for me?”

MYE: (laughing)

BCB: (laughing) And it was John Bon Jovi.

MYE: So did John do it?

BCB: He did not do it. I got to meet Heather Locklear. She and Richie Sambora had just started hanging out. One of the lounges at Bearsville had a TV, and she and my girlfriend at the time were watching it, and Melrose Place came on, and Heather just kind of blushed.

MYE: (laughing) That’s funny.

BCB: I love that part of the country.

MYE: How did it feel to have Al Jourgensen, on the “End of Days pt.1” and “End of Days pt.2”, basically turn over the lead vocals to you on what are basically some of the last Ministry songs ever from his final album for that band, The Last Sucker? I thought it was cool, as a kind of bridge towards his 13th Planet roster, kind of saying, “This is what’s next,” ‘cuz he also had you sing on a song with Tommy Victor from Prong.

BCB: Yep. We did “Die In A Crash” together. Al didn’t even want to use that song ‘cuz it was one of the first ones they wrote when he got the board in and he played it for us, but Tommy and I thought it was dope! So Al said, “Ok,” and why don’t we come back to him with some ideas? And we just rocked it out. It worked. It was just one of those things, really.

MYE: How about “End of Days”? That’s a big two part track.

BCB: Man, that one was a complete honor. He played me the song and asked if I thought I could do it, and I said, “Man, I’m gonna own this song!” Al was giving me the chance of a lifetime, for me, because Al Jourgensen has been a musical hero of mine for years, even before Fear Factory. Ministry’s The Land of Rape and Honey was the one that got me hooked. I was like, “Holy shit, man!” I thought, “I gotta go in here and I gotta be that guy.” So with that opportunity and that in mind, I was like, “Alright.”

MYE: Awesome. Hey, some of the surprising covers you’ve done in the past, like Fear Factory doing Gary Numan’s “Cars”…

BCB: That was Dino’s idea.

MYE: Oh, it was (laughing). Ok. Well, for Ascension of The Watchers what made you want to cover Simon and Garfunkel’s “The Sound of Silence”?

BCB: I’ve always really loved that song, so a few years ago I found it on a 7” 45 rpm record. So I was playing it one time when I got high. So I thought, “Hey I should play it at 33. That’s always fun to do.” So I was playing “The Sound of Silence” 45 at 33 speed and it was now the heaviest Goth song I’d ever heard.

MYE: The Neurosis effect.

BCB: It didn’t sound off to me! It sounded perfect! Right there I decided I’m gonna do that version.

MYE: I thought it sounded great with your voice and almost has this vibe like chanting monks marching or something.

BCB: Actually, my twin brother is also doing vocals on that.

MYE: That’s Ben, right?

BCB: Yeah, he plays lead guitar and is doing harmony vocals.

MYE: So no overdubs, wow.

BCB: Yeah, no overdubs. That was actually one take for both of us.

MYE: Wow, that’s awesome man!

BCB: It was magical. And Al played lap steel guitar on it. He played on my record. I was like, “God! Not many people can say they’ve had Al Jourgensen play on their record.” So I decided, I’ve gotta do this song and it just snowballed. That was one Al wanted to play on and he wanted to mix it too.

MYE: I’d love to hear that one live. So next, I was wondering if you could tell me a little about the story of the Watchers, where the band name comes from. I read in your bio it was from the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Book of Enoch and I was wondering more about it. I heard you could relate to it. I’ve read it was about angels and humans or something?

BCB: The Book of Enoch tells the story of the Watchers and the Watchers were a band of Angels, like 200 of them in Heaven. It was the early days of man and as man was progressing these angels became so enamored that they fell in love with man and they went to Earth. They got together and they made a pact to abandon Heaven and descend to Earth and teach us the ways of the stars and the minerals and the sky. The ways of God. They gave up knowledge to the Earth. As they were teaching the humans everything they were also mating with us and the offspring were a race of giants. They were considered giants and were devouring everything and consuming the Earth and each other. There was mass bloodshed. As God looked down to the Earth he became so disheartened by it that he told Gabriel to go to Noah and say to build an Ark. God decided to wipe everybody out.

MYE: Oh, so it’s tied into that story.

BCB: Yeah, so I got the name The Watchers, because at that time, I felt there was a parallel. I really related to the allegory. It sounds sort of insane, but the lyrics and ideas I was writing fit, and I decided to call the band The Watchers, but there was another band from Chicago called the Watchers. So, basically I added to it rather than lose the idea of the Watchers.

MYE: And adding Ascension of…it sort of underlines the positive side of the tale, the lessons.

BCB: Well, it is a spiritual journey for redemption and self-knowledge and these are Watchers who are seeking redemption from being cast out from Heaven never to return again.

MYE: Also, I wanted to make sure earlier that I wasn’t saying you’d been a hypocrite, just that you had sung about hypocrisy.

BCB: I didn’t think that at all. I’m thirty nine years old, and we’re all on a journey. It’s a journey of learning and understanding, and we’re all on one. The things I wrote about as a young man, I have learned more about since then. My ideas have grown. I might have the same face I had when I was twenty, but I’m not the same person I was. How can you be one thing your entire life? It’s impossible.

MYE: I feel sorry for people whose goal is that, because it kind of weakens their most genuine statements. It’s weird. Boxed in.

BCB: Exactly. Where’s the growth in that. To me, life is my spiritual journey.

MYE: Being positive about this journey, I know that Dino Cazares has been saying some negative things still, about Fear Factory and you, and I wondered if at this point you think you guys will ever reconcile? I used to go see Vext, the old band of Tommy, Dino’s new singer from Divine Heresy, play in New York. I am a fan of yours, and stuff that Dino has done also. As a fan I’d love to see everyone sort of move forward somehow at this point.

BCB: Yeah, you can’t control what anybody is gonna say. I’m over it, but whatever he says, I’m not surprised. Some people are just so predictable, that’s all I’ve gotta say.

MYE: I’m not gonna drag the interview down into too much of that but…

BCB: Some people just talk shit all the time and don’t change so too bad for him.

MYE: Dude, so what made you confident enough to even sing in French on one song off the Numinosum record?

BCB: Well, last year my wife and I spent the whole month of May in Paris. I was so inspired out there and we saw so much beauty and art. It was all about art. I thought, I really get this place now. We had a great time. I’m doing something different in a lot of ways, obviously, on this record, but I realized a lot of European bands sing in English. I thought, what if an American singer sang in French?! Maybe it could get me some popularity over there and help me out.

MYE: It kind of breaks the stigma too of U.S. people being so culturally isolated from everyone else too.

BCB: Yeah, so I was opening my mind and trying to bridge cultural boundaries. So what if it is in French? It still sounds cool, to me. I had a fan translate my words into French, and I had a French coach help me say it properly. French people have said I didn’t do bad. It actually was more musical than they expected.

MYE: It fits the music, definitely. Hey man, that’s all I’ve got. It’s great to have had a chance to talk to you. You’ve definitely been one of the most influential singers as far as for my life over the years, and it was very great to do this.

BCB: Appreciate it, Morgan. I’m glad that you are a fan that can really expand and that you can see many sides of music.

MYE: (laughing) Hey, that’s what it’s about.

BCB: Exactly.