Demanufacture

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. 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." 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 band's 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 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.