Professional ratings
Aggregate scores
Source	Rating
Metacritic	81/100
Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic
Boston Herald
Entertainment Weekly	A
Mojo
NME	7/10
Pitchfork Media	8.3/10
Q
Rolling Stone
Spin	B

Rubber Factory is the third studio album by American rock duo The Black Keys. It was self-produced by the band and was released on September 7, 2004 on Fat Possum Records. The album was recorded in an abandoned tire-manufacturing factory in the group's hometown of Akron, Ohio. Rubber Factory received positive reviews and was the band's first album to chart on the Billboard 200 in the United States, reaching number 143.

The Black Keys recorded their first two studio albums in drummer Patrick Carney's basement. For their third studio album, the band was forced to find a new recording location, as the building that Carney lived in was sold by its landlord. They decided to set up a makeshift studio in a dilapidated factory in their hometown of Akron, Ohio that was previously used by General Tire to manufacture rubber tires. The band rented the entire second floor of the building for $500 per month, dubbing their workspace "Sentient Sound". General Tire closed the factory in 1982, though space in the building was still being leased out at the time of recording. Of the factory, Carney said it was "not really ideal in any way. It's too far away. It's on the second story. It's hot as hell. You can't open the windows. The acoustics are horrible." For recording, the group used a mixing console that Carney purchased on eBay from a former sound technician for Canadian rock band Loverboy. Frequent malfunctions with the console stretched the sessions nearly five months; the group ultimately ditched the console in the factory after completing Rubber Factory. The album was recorded on recycled tape provided by the band's record label Fat Possum from its studios in Mississippi.

Carney said of the experience:

"We were looking for a place and we saw the 'for rent' sign and it's just this giant building and the first floor is where all the big storage rooms are, the big kind of cavernous rooms, and then the second floor is where they had all the offices and laboratories, and that's where we rented our space... we just kind of rented one room, but there was no one around us in that corner of the building so we had cables running out the door and across the hallway and into other rooms and stuff and it was basically just like this kind of deserted old building and we had free reign [sic] of it."

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