article from enews:

I'll see if I can make the August 18th show in Grand Rapids. I've had a burned copy of Factory 81 forever, but I never remember to check it out. I didn't pay for it, so I guess there's no incentive to get it off my list of bands I should be listening to but haven't yet. If I didn't have a job, I could listen to so much more music. Working sucks.
-- La Playa

Factory 81 is the shit. They are an awesome fucking band.
-- Floating_Torso_Man

spent two days this week traveling with Factory 81 and their current tour mates Chimaira, 40 below summer, and Ill Nino. I met up with the guys in Duluth, Minnesota where they played in the Tap Room, a basement club in a restored brewery right on the shore of Lake Superior.

Factory 81 from Southfield, Michigan is one of the heaviest bands out there right now. Singer Nate Wallace reminds me of Boy Hits Car's CRegg Rondell for several reasons: his voice is high and persistent, his lyrics are direct and hard-hitting, and he doesn't like to publish his lyrics, preferring - like CRegg - to publish stories relating to the songs and thereby encourage his listeners to search for and perhaps invent their own meanings and interpretations.

Factory 81 appeals to people like La Playa who have relatively little investment in a stable social order and who are just beginning to come to terms with the social contract. However, like all good art, Factory 81's music appeals to anyone - regardless of age - who is searching for deep introspection and re-evaluation of the individual's place in society. Personally, I didn't want their set to end, and when I went to a restaurant after the show, I found I had difficulty dealing with numbers -- comparing percentages of products on the menu -- which surprised me quite a bit and made me realize what an impact the music had had on me. I felt like a huge pressure was bearing down on me, and I was being squeezed into the lowest level of a squarish box not unlike the club I had just left, and the pressure on top of me was a huge weight of social expectations. For me, Factory 81 successfully translated the pressure they feel or have felt in their lives into music that is capable of producing a similar response in their listeners.

Seeing the individual as a slave in society is one of Factory 81's basic themes. "I can see I'm not free/ I believe in no one but me/ All eyes on me/ Pointing at me/ Falling you see/ Won't you fucking watch me bleed?/ You're a slave, weak inside you're a slave, feeding your mind you're a slave, selling your pain you're a slave, signing your name you're a slave, open your doors you're a slave, weak inside you're a slave feeding your mind you're a slave." If it seems a little immature, that's OK by me because these guys are 100% serious about their introspection. And anyway, am I a slave? Or am I not a slave? Not just to concepts like the need for work, the need to build something in society, but perhaps more importantly to the unthinking concessions we all tend to make every day to the things we know are wrong. Many questions. Art. Few clear answers in Factory 81.

By becoming a worker, and agreeing to another's bidding for a certain amount of money are, or are you not selling yourself into voluntary slavery? If your time is worth the money, then why is the money wanted more than the time? Time is the only possession of substance. Time is the only thing of value. Time and love are the only currency accepted.

That's what my poem is all about, because if that is true then we are no more advanced than we were with slaves. The blue collar worker may be voluntarily working and enjoying his time when he is not working, but he has no choice but to continue, because society doesn't allow him anything better. I'm not exactly an anarchist, but I don't think it's right to have no choice but to give in. I'd probably be some kind of anarchist or communist if I didn't think that leaving one evil would only spawn another. I just want to get away.
-- La Playa

The other bands on the tour are also definitely worth checking out. Chimaira from the Cleveland area is a tremendously gloomy, dark band with the message of life's tragedy pressed into every word. Song titles "This Present Darkness" and "Painting the White to Grey" give a good idea of their material. Great merchandise. CD out in October on Roadrunner, upcoming tour with Nonpoint, Darwin's Waiting Room, and Reveille at the end of August. 40 below summer from NJ/NY has a charismatic singer, Max Illidge, who is a very down-to-earth artist doing some interesting things with his voice - brings it right to the edge, almost screaming but actually more like a stressed out mechanized cry a la Sisters of Mercy. He does a great job of capturing the pressure and downside of life in the NJ/NY metro area. Currently their bassist is Steve Schalk of VBS, who is filling in - I might add incredibly naturally - while regular bassist Hector Graziani recovers from surgery after injuring his knee during a recent performance. On the trivia front, Max was the little kid in the Talking Heads' video of "Burning Down the House." Their CD was produced by the same GGGarth who did Boy Hits Car, and is in stores September 11. Ill Nino also from NJ/NY boast an all-Latino lineup but actually I think you could close your eyes and listen to them and not really need to know that. I mean, how important is Latino identity going to be as a marketing tool, when you already have a band as musically adept as Ill Nino? Personally, I don't hear the Latin vibe at all in Ill Nino like I do in Puya. The chorus in "God Save Us" is almost as pretty as anything Depeche Mode ever did: "This is hard to believe/ I am not what you see/ All the pressure is breaking down on me/ I will take what is mine/ and wont waste any time/ Dont believe in what you want for me." I guess the question boils down to how important is it for Latino artists to identify with their heritage..by extension, is a female author a woman who writes or a writer who is a woman? African-American or American-African? CD out this Tuesday July 31.

Scott Sigel