Demanufacture

Demanufacture is the second studio album (not including the previous EP Fear Is the Mindkiller) by the Los Angeles industrial metal band Fear Factory. This is the band's first album with their classic line-up adding new bassist Christian Olde Wolbers. Many regard it as the band's best album and a heavy metal classic.^[1][2][3] The album was certified Gold in Australia by ARIA^[4] and Silver in the UK by the BPI.^[5]

Album information

Demanufacture is purported to be a concept album about a man's struggles against a machine-controlled government, with each song a chapter in his life. The band stated the album took its inspiration from the movie, The Terminator.^[6]

This album was originally mixed by its producer Colin Richardson, who had performed both duties on the band's debut album. However, differences between the band and producer emerged over the mix, with Richardson wishing not to stray too far from Soul of a New Machine. In the 2005 re-release liner notes, Monte Conner notes Richardson's focus on the guitars at the expense of the electronics, and suggests that this is the reason for the rejection of Richardson's mix. The final mix for the album was subsequently performed by Greg Reely, Rhys Fulber and the band. The Richardson mixes of "Zero Signal" and "Body Hammer" were later released on the Hatefiles compilation.

The album was recorded at Bearsville Studios in rural New York. Also in residence at the studio was Bon Jovi, recording their album These Days. Fear Factory were in the studio next door and one of Bon Jovi's engineers asked them to turn the sound down, as it was bleeding into Bon Jovi's recording sessions.^[7]

After the release of the album, some critics and observers suggested that drummer Raymond Herrera had in fact used a drum machine, due to the often blistering speed and machine-like precision of the drumming, most notably on the bass drums. He records, however, with a click track to keep time.^[8] He is also known to use triggers on his drum sets for the purpose of keeping the sound of his drums, particularly bass drums, consistent regardless of how hard they are struck. This is a common strategy used by metal drummers when playing at such speeds, as relatively few drummers are able to achieve such rapid and consistent notes without the use of triggers.

Though the album was written largely before Christian Olde Wolbers had joined, and though Dino Cazares played bass on several tracks, Olde Wolbers later stated in an interview in 2004 that he made a small contribution to the writing of the title track and "Pisschrist."^[9] Reynor Diego was heavily involved during the recording sessions as well. Along with Rhys Fulber, Diego collaborated and contributed samples, loops, and electronic textures throughout the album. The music for "A Therapy For Pain" was originally written as the opening for "Echoes of Innocence" from the then unreleased Concrete demo. The outro passage was inspired by John Carpenter, Hidjokaidan, and Aphex Twin. The use of organ in "Dog Day Sunrise" came from a in-joke between Diego and Bell about the Doors. During post production work with Richardson, Bell performed and added the organ parts to the track.

The video for the song "Replica" is unlockable in the video game Test Drive 5. Several songs from this album were used without lyrics for the game Carmageddon. These were Demanufacture, Zero Signal (which had the piano ending omitted) and Body Hammer. The song "Zero Signal" was featured on the soundtrack to the movie Mortal Kombat and can be heard in part during the fight scene between Scorpion and Johnny Cage. In reference to this, the band regularly featured a vocal sample of Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa's character of Shang Tsung in the movie saying "Fatality" during live performances of the song thereafter. "Demanufacture" was used in the opening video of GameShark 2 released by Mad Catz in 2004, along with numerous other Fear Factory songs.

The opening riff of the title track was voted 19th in Total Guitar's list of "The Heaviest Riffs of all Time". The opening sample for "Pisschrist" and "Zero Signal" are both taken from "Terminator 2: Judgment Day". The bands then-unreleased first album "Concrete" also had a track named "Piss Christ", but the two bear no similarities other than the title. The song "Replica" has been covered by Dutch symphonic gothic metal band Epica on their album The Divine Conspiracy, Divine Heresy & Roadrunner United live.

The original digipaks had slightly different artwork, most noticeably a different barcode on the front cover, and different colouring within the words "Fear Factory". The digipak was re-released in 2003 with all bonus tracks mentioned above, but with the new Roadrunner Records logo on the front and back and different lettering on the spine. This version is not limited, but has since been replaced by the remastered edition detailed below. In all, four different digipak versions of the album are available.

Tracks 1 to 4 were featured on The Best of Fear Factory.

Reception

• Kerrang! (p. 61) - "[T]his is a landmark of '90s metal that defied categorisation and remains a touchstone of the genre."
• Kerrang! (p. 51) - "[With] sonorous, soaring vocal hooks. The melding of power and melody proved a statement of absolute power."
• Metal Hammer (p. 60) - "So far ahead of its time that bands are still failing to rip it off convincingly today, Fear Factory's ultra-precise extreme metal attack and pioneering harsh-to-clean vocal approach dragged metal into the future."

Music critic Piero Scaruffi includes Demanufacture at number 7, just after Napalm Death's From Enslavement to Obliteration and before Dream Theater's Images and Words, in his classification of the best metal albums of all times.^[12]

Tracks

Credits

• All Music Written by Dino Cazares & Raymond Herrera except "Demanufacture" and "Pisschrist" Written by Dino Cazares, Raymond Herrera & Christian Olde Wolbers, "Self Bias Resistor", Written by Dino Cazares, Raymond Herrera & Burton C. Bell and "Dog Day Sunrise", Written by Head Of David.

• All Lyrics Written by Burton C. Bell except "New Breed", Written by Burton C. Bell & Dino Cazares and "Dog Day Sunrise", Written by Head of David.

Release history

2005 Remastered Edition

The album was remastered and re-released on June 7, 2005 in a digipak edition, with new bonus tracks and the remastered Remanufacture - Cloning Technology as the second disc.

CD# 1 bonus tracks

Chart performance