Front Line Assembly’s most popular album came out back in 1994 – the same year Nine Inch Nails The Downward Spiral was released. More than 30 years ago. Both still sound and feel ahead of their time.
Front Line Assembly is an industrial band that resides in Vancouver. Originally founded in 1986 after Bill Leeb left fellow Canadian industrial band Skinny Puppy, the band has rotated and included different members over the years. The two main constants are Bill Leeb and Rhys Fulber. It is a soundtrack for this world we live in. One of Front Line Assembly’s members is Rhys Fulber.
Their music is on Millennium and elsewhere is synth-driven, dark, and dystopian. There are notes of Nine Inch Nail’s industrial style on the album. There are also notes of Rage Against The Machine’s eponymous album, which came out in 1991. But Rage Against The Machine was burning with justified anger at the inequality and racism all around us, and The Downward Spiral points out the unbalance and self loathing that festers within. Millennium is more a warning or portent to unregulated warmongering and fear and aggression.
Listening to this album invokes feelings in me like visiting an old friend, or wrapping myself in a security blanket. The sounds and music may be wild and dissonant, but there is a comfort to it at the same time.
Am I weird for finding this grinding guitar and synth-driven music comforting? Probably. But when the news coming from south of us is as aggressive and manipulative and downright insane as it is right now? I don’t care. I want some comfort.
Like dystopian books such as George Orwell’s 1984, Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We, and Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, dystopian albums like Millennium and my next album pick (will post it a few weeks from now) aren’t meant to be perfect. They are meant to be a glimpse at a future that we hopefully never have to live in.
Or, a big I TOLD YOU SO when that world unleashes itself into our present day lives.
Cheers,
Evan
Amid All This Confusion
We Lose Sight of The Enemy
Like Evil Gods of Destruction
They Move Through Liquid Transparencies
