It was a long process. We entered into its composition in 2016. It took time, because after our 1st album we wanted to develop our sound, in particular to allow evolutions towards prog, with longer, more complex songs. This was also a period of mutual taming with L4AZ, who produced the album. They took the time to get to know us, to fully enter our complex world, to understand our expectations. In particular, a lot of work was done by Maxime Fieux, our sound engineer who mixed and mastered the album. We are really happy with the result, and grateful for his patience !!
- How would you describe your sound?
Our sound is an energetic metal mix, mixing prog, electro-industrial and punk influences. Given the complexity of our sound and our very diverse influences depending on the band members, we have long wondered how to define ourselves. Bands that put 3 or 4 sub-genre names in front of metal made us laugh, and at the same time just saying "metal" was not very meaningful. After reflection, it's been a few years that we say we do "dystopian metal", which rather highlights the story that we tell with the group, and which at the same time indicates a little the atmosphere towards which we lean ...
- What do you write about?
We have created a particular kind of sick post-apocalyptic tale, mainly inspired by dystopian sci-fi literature. We imagine the world after The Great Cataclysm, the Third World War, which we situate in 2025. Our 1st album, “Massive Lies”, set the scene a few decades later, in 2130. With Massive Lies, we presented certain scenes of this world, like flashes. Our last album, “The Tower Below”, is a descent into the depths of Toxi Faktory, the laboratory that ensures the methodical coherence of the system. The Tower Below is a sort of huge library that holds all of the system's information. We are staging a power that acts in concealment; in this last opus, we therefore find a lot the idea of seeking the truth, of digging, as in the title Diggin’ Through which opens the album.
- What do you listen to when you are home?
The five members of the band have radically different influences, and that's what makes Toxi Faktory's complex recipe! According to the members, you can find in their headphones prog, industrial, death, hard-rock, grind-core, sympho, punk, electro… We created a playlist on our Spotify account, called "ToXinFluenZ", so that our fans can find them.
- Your favourite live performance so far?
Wow, since the time we tour, there is too much ... If we had to catch one, we may say when we played for the 1st time in Nantes (north-west of France) in 2017. No one knew us, and we were scheduled in a rather hardcore evening, we said to ourselves, not our city not our style it will be dead ... And in fact it was just madness, the public was so reactive !! And in addition it ended in great party ... Thanks Nantes, you are fucking cool and underground people!
- Tell us a funny story that happened in studio or on stage.
For a gig, a producer had mentioned "Hard-Rock / Punk" instead of "Metal" for our style. It was already enough to make us laugh, but the regional daily transformed it into "hard-rock / funk", which made us laugh out loud by imagining the surprise of a lot of funky people in front of our show!
- Your favourite albums?
Magma (Gojira), Reise Reise (Rammstein), The Downward Spiral (Nine Inch Nails), Hello Karma! (Psykup), Bloodstone and Diamonds (Machine Head) ...
- A musician you would like to meet for a beer?
Julien Cassarino from Psykup!
- What would you ask for backstage, if you were the most important band on earth?
A rum fountain, a jacuzzi and a masseur per person, it would already be a good start ...
- What are your plans for the near future?
Even though we have already started to compose the first songs for the third album, the idea is not to go back to the studio right away. Already, the lockdown means that we haven't been able to play the new show much on stage, and we want to make up for it by playing as much as possible in the months to come (we have some gigs in the south-west of France until the end of 2022). Then we continue to work on a new clip with L4AZ who already produced three for us recently, with Chouchou l’Amoureuse performing. Finally, we are also working on the visuals and the texts to continue to introduce our fans to the whole universe that we are building around our music, which is very important for us!
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Interviews