Obsolete (album)

Obsolete (styled as °BSΩLE+e) is the third studio album by American industrial metal band Fear Factory, released on July 28, 1998, through Roadrunner Records. It was produced by Fear Factory, Greg Reely and Rhys Fulber, the latter of whom wrote, arranged and performed all of the album's keyboard parts, and was the band's first full album to feature bassist Christian Olde Wolbers, who performed on around half of the tracks of the band's previous album Demanufacture (1995). Musically, the album saw Fear Factory experiment with their sound, featuring a more "organic" groove than the band's previous album. The band's first fully fledged concept album, Obsolete revolves around a story penned by vocalist Burton C. Bell, "Conception 5", set in the year 2076 where machines have taken over mankind. With the success of its fourth single, a cover version of "Cars" by Gary Numan, featuring Numan himself on vocals, Obsolete would break Fear Factory into the mainstream and remain their highest selling album. In 2019, Joe Smith-Engelhardt of Alternative Press included the song "Edgecrusher" in his list of "Top 10 nü-metal staples that still hold up today".