Fear Factory long ago broke through the barriers of metal as we know it.

Frontman Burton C. Bell even quit the band a few years back after losing creative ground. But with so much unexplored territory around them, Fear Factory switched gears and recently embarked on their 2006 Machines at War tour, which brings them to the Starlite Room tonight.

Catching up with Bell in Grand Rapids, Michigan, the 37-year-old singer explains his quest as an artist, and for the band, is to go where no one has before. And it started with a name.

Unlike most bands, which have little reason behind their names, branding themselves as Fear Factory back in 1990 meant something real to its members.

"We wanted something that was timeless and something that was provocative and created images within ours heads," says Bell. "We just came up with a philosophy and discussed what Fear Factory was and what it could be, and it seemed to be perfect.

"We didn't want to fall into any real type. We wanted heavy music, but we wanted to experiment with all sorts of ideas and concepts and move forward with it."

Fear Factory's debut came in 1991 with Concrete, but the band didn't have much impact on the world until Soul of a New Machine came out the following year.

"It was more like the baby was born and was kicking in all kinds of ideas and just experimenting with all different types of things," says Bell. "But it was still searching for itself."

The next year Fear Factory took things a step further with their EP Fear Is A Mind Killer, where the band's signature electronic sound appeared and prompted critics to combine genres, describing them as a death/industrial/grind band.

"I think (Soul of a New Machine) really influenced the feeling and really gave us a good direction for Demanufacture, the sound and production, and I think it was with Demanufacture that we really found our voice," Bell says of the album that first introduced the lyrical storyline of "man versus machine.''

Instead of writing song descriptions for their press package, Bell decided to summarize Demanufacture's songs as a story, which carried on through their next two records.

"This is what created the whole concept of man versus machine and it kind of really put the band into a whole other light," says Bell, who was inspired by movies like Terminator and Blade Runner and books like George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-four.

"Man versus machine is a metaphor and in the metaphor, the machine's not necessarily a technological machine. It can be government, it can be society, a political system, it can be a country, and as long as there's struggle, this machine is always around. Man versus the machine and humanity against the struggle," says Bell.

Even though Bell's lyrical ideas evolved in subsequent albums to explore religion and corporatism in society, this idea has carried on into last year's Transgression.

The band is weathering its own struggles with the industry.

"Right now we're a completely independent band. We're free of labels and free of all sorts of things, so it's all about the music right now," says Bell, who is also a creative writer.

Fear Factory's recent split with Liquid 8 Records as well as the controversy surrounding the band's 2002 break-up and reformation without guitarist and founding member Dino Cazares are not subjects Bell's willing to discuss. But he has been planning Fear Factory's next album, where fans can catch the next chapter of this story.