review from the pimp rock palace:

After many listens to this CD all I can say is wow, this is perhaps one of the most talented bands I have heard in the year of 1999. The CD from start to finish is incredibly impressive, emotion, aggression, sadness, angst, you can feel all these emotions while listening to this deftly well layered music. The band contains elements of the Deftones, Tool and maybe even a smear of Vision Of Disorder. Explosive screams, spiraling breakdowns that wind down like dying machine's gears, experimental percussion, the CD just has it going on. Nate the vocalist draws out the tone carrying notes, bringing in the spindling highs and trembling lows, he has a very talented voice and does something unique in the way he inflects words and tones, consistently he hold's the melody almost ad-libbing every verse with hums and emotion. The closest comparison I could use in the way he controls his voice would be Chino of the Deftones, but while singing melodies he somewhat brings to mind Tool singer Maynard James Keenan. His voice is very unique and thankfully the term copycat doesn't apply here. Guitar work is interesting, alot of dynamics are used, distortion hums, open chords, squeals mixed in with a coherent constant rhythm definitely add to the music. Downtuned bass is there driving the song and providing the backbone but never really takes a huge presence in the music, except for the hidden track in which it provides a groove heavy hip hop style bassline. Drums have a somewhat dampened and downtuned sound and are very closely integrated with the dynamics of the guitar and vocals making for a crushing wall of sonic fury that vigorously entrances the listener. One thing that vividly sticks out is that the band isn't afraid to experiment, there's tribal percussion elements at play, turntables make guest appearances on a few tracks, all while the songs proceed forward constantly moving and displaying a rather wide avenue of variety. A few downsides to the CD that I could see would be that the live performance might be a bit scaled down due to a fairly extensive use of vocal overdubs, as well that when Nate sings melodically, it's extremely impressive, but he never seems to really let loose the full sensitivity of his anguish, it always seems to be cut short by an angered scream or aggressive chant. With such a talented voice, more usage of the saddened and remorseful tone could make the music utterly flawless. Perhaps we shall see more of this with their next release. Factory 81 are a band soaked with talent, in a better world this CD would be a chapter in a textbook on how to make impressive music, but for now take note, because this band has what it takes to make innovative cutting edge emotion drenched music that isn't afraid to bust out of the restraints of the tried and tested mellow verse, angry chorus song pattern. Factory 81's style and flow is much like a inoculation of hope and refreshment in the scene, with the genuine emotion and low key innovation the CD contains, it's all but guaranteed to fight off the infection of boring stale music flooding the scene.
score: 5/5