I bought this album right around the time it came out and listened to it a lot in the late 1990s. Thrash and industrial were among my favorite genres at the time, and Fear Factory had a pretty sweet spot right at the intersection of the two.
For whatever reason, I don't think I have listened to Demanufacture at all in the intervening 20+ years. There was a mention of the band in something I was reading a few days ago, so I decided to revisit the album. I was a bit nervous going into it—not everything I used to like still hold up—but I was not disappointed.
Does it sound a little dated? Sure, but then so do most albums that are more than a few years old. If you want something that sound entirely of its time, go listen to any rock album that came out in the first decade of the 2000s.
Even so, I find that Demanufacture holds up really well. It is just a great album from start to finish and listening to it now, I'm kind of amazed by how ahead-of-its-time it was. I think Fear Factory probably doesn't get the credit they deserve when it comes to highly influential bands and albums.