Review: Front Line Assembly, Millennium

September 1, 1994
by Sean G. Thomas

Police radio snippets, Michael Douglas samples... guitars? Within the first minute of Millennium's opener "Vigilante", even casual listeners will recognize the sound of Headbanger's Ball crossover temptation.

Front Line Assembly, the band Trent Reznor once blasted as "bad industrial" incarnate, has over the years developed a densely subtle blend of house, techno and aggro that reveals Nine Inch Nails as the INXS-meets-Ministry cash-in they've always been. Missing only were guitars and sales.

Scratch that first one off the list. Seemingly live guitar rubs shoulders with breakbeats, acid-house bleeps, samples, noise loops... and isn't that Mark from Consolidated on the Biohazard-esque "Victim of a Criminal"? "Front Line ain't goin' out like that!"

It rises above simple hodgepodge because FLA frontman Bill Leeb understands that the new metal is as much collage as hip-hop is, and as a Skinny Puppy alumnus he's a veteran sample-scavenger. In fact, Millennium's closest musical cousin is Skinny Puppy's Al Jourgensen-produced, half-hearted crossover Rabies.

Millennium, however, brims with confidence. Leeb rolls, Panzer-like, through disparate musical styles with authority, and occasional overreaches aside ("Division of Mind"'s awkward rave-meets-Sabbath tempo changes) he mixes and matches with the best of them.

Commercial hurdles: Leeb may be a masterful sonic integrator, but he still equates a chorus with extra drum beats and cheesy gothic chords, and his voice is grating even by industrial's trachiotomized standards. Plus, the Consolidated collaboration proves that, given phat beats and thrash guitars, most white men will stridently rewrite "She Watch Channel Zero" (whither the industrial Snoop Dogg?).

But such criticism is petty. Leeb has taken on post-modern pop, and emerged with personality intact. For an experimental electronic band, Millennium's commerciality is, oddly, FLA's biggest experiment yet.

Sean G. Thomas, Sean Thomas, Sean Garrett Thomas