Demanufacture (album)

Album information

Demanufacture is 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.

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.

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. 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.

Dino Cazares played bass on all tracks because the album was completed before Christian Olde Wolbers joined the band. Olde Wolbers later stated in an interview in 2004 that he made a small contribution to the writing of the title track and "Pisschrist." However, this was impossible because all the tracks were laid prior to him joining the band. In good faith it was agreed to credit him as the Fear Factory official bassist since he joined prior to the Demanufacture tours. 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" was inspired 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 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. 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 metal band Epica on their album The Divine Conspiracy, Divine Heresy & Roadrunner United live. Cyber Metal band Mechina covered track "Zero Signal".

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.

In July 2013, the band toured Australia performing Demanufacture in its entirety.

In popular culture

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.

Reception

Upon its release, Demanufacture received universal acclaim by music critics. It is often called a landmark record in alternative metal, and heavy metal in general, and is often regarded as the band's best album. Andrew Kapper of about.com named Demanufacture as the recommended album to listen to by the band, and stated in his review ″Demanufacture Quite rightly regarded as one of the finest metal releases to come out in the last 25 years, Demanufacture was a game changer in the metal world. Backed with a mechanical assault of machine gun drum work and guitar riffs, Burton C. Bell’s groundbreaking extreme to clean vocals take the center stage, with enormous hooks covering tracks like “Replica”, “Zero Signal” and the title track, while keyboard and synths create both harsh and lush counterpoints across the record. A classic LP that deserves to be in any serious metalhead’s collection.″

"Replica" was covered by Dutch female-fronted metal band Epica in 2007 as part of a "deluxe re-release" of the album The Divine Conspiracy, and was performed live by them at the Whisky a Go Go with Dino Cazares joining on stage in September 2007. "Flashpoint" was covered as a one-man effort by American metal artist Common Dead in 2012 as a standalone single. "Pisschrist" was covered by American heavy metal band Byzantine in 2016 as part of their re-release of their 2015 album To Release Is to Resolve for the European region.

Track listing

All music by Dino Cazares and Raymond Herrera except where noted; All lyrics by Burton C. Bell except where noted

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.

Personnel

Fear Factory