26 May 2026 – The Tivoli, Brisbane – words and pictures by Clea-marie Thorne
Walking into The Tivoli and immediately feeling the room sitting on edge. Black shirts packing in and many fans opting to queue for merch shoulder-to-shoulder that head straight to the bar.
Old tour prints fading across beer bellies and hugging tattooed biceps. As the crowd piles in groups are starting to holler over each other at the bar while the stage glows cold blue through the haze. Brisbane knowing full well it is about to get flattened and I am absolutely ready for it.
That particular tension heavy shows carry is already hanging thick in the room long before Fear Factory even appear. It’s not nervousness, I feel it’s more like anticipation with teeth. The kind that settles in your ribs while punters clutching beers or premixes and scanning the room for the best available viewing spots.
Brisbane deathcore outfit Product of Neglect seem to be easing the crowd in gently to begin with. Not being familiar with the band, I listened to a few tracks prior to the show and what I listened to is nothing like what I am experiencing from the dark smokey stage in front of me. Christopher Steley (bass) is stalking the stage back and forth with this unsettling presence. Michael Robertson (drums) is behind a hectic looking kit. I swear a vocalist and guitarists are missing from this picture.
Product of Neglect – Tivoli – photos by Clea-marie Thorne
Just as I think I should check if the lineup was changed Pierce Thompson (guitar) and Gregory Laird (guitar) emerge onto the stage and begin to grind out disgusting down-tuned riffs that feel like they are dragging rusted chains through the venue walls. Brandon Lee Haase (vocals) joins the party pacing the stage like a bloke trying to outrun possession. Steley with his unnerving persona keeps the low end filthy and Robertson is absolutely flogging the kit with relentless force. There is a loose pit going off and dead centre is a dude looking very much like a goth Wiggle absolutely living his best pit moment. By closing track ‘Cerberus’, the front rows are sweating beer and deodorant into each other while security starts leaning forward watching the pit that is coming to life.
Intermission thirty minute bar and loo dash is on. Then the lights drop completely.
A familiar mechanical pulse starts crawling through the speakers before we hear the words, “…adapt or die!” and the roar that follows is a collective recognition vocalised in a huge rowdy cheer. Fear Factory are announced and are walking into the haze one by one looking focused and completely locked in as they launch the set off with its very first riff.
Fear Factory – Tivoli – photos by Clea-marie Thorne
‘What Will Become?’ immediately turns the floor feral. Beers are sloshing over shoes. Bodies are smashing apart then folding straight back together like nobody wants the gap staying open for more than two seconds.
Dino Cazares (guitar) is standing there grinding out mechanised riffs with surgical precision, flicking the occasional grin into the crowd without ever breaking focus.
Pete Webber (drums) is attacking his double bass setup so hard the kick drum logos blur under the lights, every burst turning them into a warped strobing smear that looks half glitch in the matrix, half sleep deprivation hallucination.
‘Slave Labor’ and ‘Archetype’ are going off in that way only certain live songs can deliver, where half the crowd are screaming every word while the other half are too busy trying not to get flattened in the pit. Fear Factory have always understood groove underneath the brutality and tonight that balance is landing perfectly. Brutal without becoming noise. Tight without feeling clinical.
Fear Factory – Tivoli – photos by Clea-marie Thorne
Milo Silvestro (vocals) is an absolute monster. There is no weak link moment. No awkward comparison hanging over the room. He is handling the death growls with this disgusting depth before snapping straight into massive clean choruses without losing power. A Korg Kaoss Pad sits at his fingertips, letting him twist and smear his voice live into those familiar Fear Factory textures while the room just eats it up. Brisbane is fully buying in and feeding straight back into him.
‘Industrial Discipline’ sounds gigantic live. Ugly in all the right ways. Cazares’s guitar tone grinding across the Tivoli like factory machinery chewing concrete while Webber throws in these wild thrash flourishes that somehow never pull the band out of sync. It is polished as hell but still carrying enough grime to feel dangerous.
Filling in for Tony Campos, who was expected to be out touring with Static-X before the band’s run was disrupted by medical issues within the camp, Ricky Bonazza (bass) slides into the lineup seamlessly. There is nothing hesitant about his presence either. He is stalking the stage with the same industrial stomp and low-end grime the songs demand, locking tightly against Cazares and Webber while the pit keeps churning in front of him.
Fear Factory – Tivoli – photos by Clea-marie Thorne
‘Powershifter’ bounces hard. Silvestro holds out the mic for fans to scream into it. ‘Regenerate’ still sounds vicious years later, but ‘Shock’ into ‘Edgecrusher’ is where the room properly loses itself. “Break of the Edgecrusher. Break of the Edgecrusherrrr!” Middle-aged metalheads are windmilling beside younger punters who probably discovered these songs through playlists and gaming soundtracks. There is sweat dripping off the ceiling. A bloke near the barrier loses a shoe and I bet he never finds it again.
‘Securitron (Police State 2000)’ lands with this cold industrial stomp that somehow feels even uglier and more relevant now than it probably did decades ago. Then ‘Descent’ and ‘Disruptor’ keep the pressure on without giving the room a second to properly reset.
By the time ‘Linchpin’ hits, the whole Tivoli is singing. Not politely either. Full-throated yelling straight into strangers’ faces while bodies bounce shoulder-to-shoulder across the floor. Silvestro is grinning through it while security guards stand there trying not to laugh at the chaos unfolding in front of them. Cazares still feels like the spine of it all, locked in while everything around him keeps fracturing and reforming in noise and sweat.
Fear Factory – Tivoli – photos by Clea-marie Thorne
Then Fear Factory shift gears. ‘Invisible Wounds (Dark Bodies)’ slows the violence momentarily and suddenly the room changes shape. Arms are raised. People are swaying instead of colliding. Couples are wrapping themselves around each other while Silvestro pulls genuine ache through the chorus and we are all singing “And I saw my own face…” back into the darkness with him. It is dark, heavy and weirdly human amongst all the machinery.
Any breathing room disappears quickly once ‘Scumgrief (remix)’ marches in kicking everyone square in the chest while rekindling memories of the first time we discovered Soul of a New Machine EP.
From here they run through ‘Demanufacture’ with Silvestro getting on the barrier to mic up the fans chanting “I’ve got no more goddamn regrets. I’ve got no more goddamn respect!” They back it immediately with ‘Zero Signal’ and the mighty ‘Replica’ following Cazares’ band member intros and him asking us to repeat “I don’t want to live that way!”. We don’t just repeat it, we scream it and more than once. Tonight is feeling downright punishing. Call me a masochist, I am in heaven. Necks are snapping everywhere. Beer, sweat and spittle spraying into the air above the pit. The Mortal Kombat “fatality” call during ‘Zero Signal’ sending a wave of grins through the older crowd who immediately revert back to teenagers for a few glorious minutes.
By now the Tivoli is a furnace. Shirts are drenched through. The floor is sticky as hell. Everyone is exhausted, hoarse and absolutely loving it.
Fear Factory – Tivoli – photos by Clea-marie Thorne
Next, the Gary Numan cover ‘Cars’, is injecting this strange industrial dancefloor energy into the room. Half the crowd attempt some form of stomping cybernetic groove with forty-year-old knees and blown-out backs. Somehow it works perfectly.
Before closing with ‘Final Exit’, the mood shifts hard. The song is dedicated to Seamus Duignan, the young man tragically killed following the Sydney show alongside his Uber driver after the reckless actions of another selfish idiot ended two lives far too early. You can feel the air change across the room as people absorb it.
Then the song starts and all that rage underneath Fear Factory’s music suddenly feels tied not only to our own memories but to something real that is also current. I don’t feel like it is staged emotion or forced sentimentality. Grief is sitting raw inside crushing volume that has people hugging. Others are standing completely still with heads lowered while Cazares’s riffs drag through the venue one final time.
Fear Factory are not limping through legacy status either. They are still sounding vicious. Still razor tight. Still carrying enough weight to shake an entire room loose.
The crowd spills back out onto a glistening Costin Street recently soaked from the rain while we were inside being deafened and emotionally wrung dry. Fans wander past me clutching sore necks and crumpled merch like proof they survived it.
Thirty-five years deep and Fear Factory are still crushing Brisbane under the weight of their own machinery.
