Michigan’s Factory 81 has long been one of my top five favorite bands of all time. Sure, they werent able to survive the death of nu-metal and were only able to release one album, 1999’s painfully brilliant ‘Mankind.’ There were talks of them having another realize, ‘Crawl Space,’ but apparently it never materialized. There are assorted demos and such, but nothing more.

‘Mankind’ was truly an opus. From start to finish, and surely everything in-between, the album was near perfect, at least in this journalists eyes.

They perhaps hit the big time with their cover of Cypruss Hill’s ‘Insane In the Brain,’ taken off of the ‘Take a Byte Outta Rhyme’ compilation. They toured relentlessly with bands like Apartment 26, Kittie, Mudvayne and Slaves on Dope.

In 2003, bassist Kevin Lewis and drummer Andrew Cyrulnik left the band to pursue other ventures, leading to the demise of the band.

Go Download: ‘Nanu,’ ‘Peace Officer,’ ‘14 Left’ - hell the entire album if you can swing it
Best Record: ‘Mankind’
Sounds Like: Earth Crisis, Endo, Deftones