Demanufacture (album)

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.^[7]

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 drum mics, during Bon Jovi's recording sessions.^[8][9]

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 kick drums. He records, however, with a click track to keep time.^[10] He is also known to use triggers on his drum sets for the purpose of keeping the sound of his drums consistent, particularly kick drums, 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.

More information Review scores, Source ...

Professional ratings

Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	[2]
Collector's Guide to Heavy Metal	9/10[13]
Metalitalia (IT)	9/10[14]
Truemetal.it (IT)	93%[15]
GBHBL	8/10[16]
Metalfan (NL)	92%[17]
Metal1 (DE)	10/10[18]

Close

Upon its release, Demanufacture proved to be extraordinarily successful and received universal acclaim from both music critics and extreme metal fans. It 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:

"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."^[19]

"Replica" was covered by Dutch symphonic metal band Epica in 2007 as part of a "deluxe re-release" of the album The Divine Conspiracy,^[20] and was performed live by them at the Whisky a Go Go in Hollywood, California, with Dino Cazares joining on stage in September 2007.^[21] "Flashpoint" was covered as a one-man effort by American metal artist Common Dead in 2012 as a standalone single.^[22][23] "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.

Tracks 1 to 4 were featured on 2006's The Best of Fear Factory.

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

In celebration of the 20 year anniversary of Demanufacture in 2015, Fear Factory embarked on a tour across Europe and North America playing the album.^[24][25]

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