Demanufacturing the Obsolete

In the 1990’s, Fear Factory released their two most iconic albums, Demanufacture and Obsolete.

The dystopian horror themes are easy to spot.

Obsolete is a concept album detailing the usurpation of humanity’s autonomy by the very machines we created to make our lives better, or, at least, more convenient.

This album remains their best-seller and their most influential work, though its primary claim to fame was a cover of Cars, featuring original songwriter Gary Numan as a guest vocal.

Based on singer Burton Bell’s wide reading of dystopian classics like 1984 and Brave New World, and with accompanying art by Sandman contributor Dave McKean, Obsolete is an entire story grotesquely fleshed out back when the booklet that came with the compact disc could still fulfill some of the artistic purposes that album art once did. Musically, it offered some very ahead-of-its-time mish-mashes of other genres with heavy metal.

Its predecessor, Demanufacture, explored disparate themes based on the Terminator series, and every track pokes and prods at the uncomfortable, brutal, and outright insane. One recognizes also, in the song New Breed, a reference to David Cronenberg’s deliciously vile classic film Videodrome.

Demanufacture is widely considered one of the best Metal albums ever recorded. Yours truly awards extra points to the band for disrupting a Bon Jovi recording session with the over-the-top loudness of their playing, which leaked into the glam band’s drum mikes through the walls!

I love this album. More than any other song on it, Replica has a special place in my heart.

With its simple but very effective chord progression—I can hear legend and sage Ronnie James Dio remarking that rock music tends to replicate the success of Louie, Louie—Replica nevertheless delivers a percussive onslaught and techno-industrial vibe that remains a hallmark of the Fear Factory sound.

When I heard it at 16, I didn’t fully understand its meaning. Bell screams that he is rape, hate, pain, but that he doesn’t want to live that way.

I thought to myself at the time that this was the perfect encapsulation of what it felt like to be a man issued from generation X in the aftermath of centuries of senseless war; to be, in essence, the product of rape, hate, and pain—nothing more than a commodity to be thrown away at the whim of people who will make more money off of a short war than most of us will make in several lifetimes.

I wasn’t far off, but I was channeling a macrocosmic interpretation, whereas Bell’s inspiration was far more specific, and perhaps even more disturbing, but very relevant to modern discussions, both about the cycle of violence and abortion.

Replica is a song about being a child of rape.

Here you can find an anecdote about a fan who was such a child thanking Bell for writing the song and helping him feel hope and grapple with his own chosen meaning in life.

This is a touchy subject, dear reader, but also the highest purpose of Horror to Culture, which is to explore Horror as art, though we also love the silly joy we get from it as entertainment.

I am pro-choice on the grounds of bodily autonomy, which I consider sacrosanct.

However, I also remain unconvinced that genetics or our environment must define us as individuals, and on the same grounds.

I would never blame a woman for not wanting to bring to term a child conceived in such a disgusting way; but I also deny the idea that such a pregnancy should be terminated on the grounds that the child itself will inevitably repeat the act.

If there is any hope that humanity can survive its own foibles—from our inherently violent and deceptive nature to our unfortunate tendency to unwittingly allot too much power to our technology—than it rests in our ability to utilize reason to overcome instinct and emotion.

I don’t want to live that way, and I hope you don’t either.