Search - Front Line Assembly :: Artificial Soldier

Revitalized my interest.

J. Mcdaniel | GA United States | 07/25/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I can't say this is necessarily a return to anything, but it definitely brings back an overtly angry edge I felt they'd been missing for a while. There'll never be another Tactical Neural Implant, Millenium or Hardwired, but this is a welcome version of their talent. I can hardly wait to hear this in a club so can I dance to some of its furiousness and even the long-missed stompiness."

An all around great album...

Steven R. Reeves | Lansdale, Pa USA | 01/03/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Some of Front Line Assembly's recent albums haven't been up to par with their very best albums. (Notably Tactical Neural Implant, Caustic Grip, State of Mind. Though, for my money, anything they put out in the eighties and early nineties was excellent.) I think their decline started with Millennium, which I felt was really not very good at all. Hard Wired looked like a return to form, but they started sinking again after that.



However, Artificial Soldier is absolutely excellent. The best track, I feel, is Future Fail. It's interesting that I like it so much, as the lead singer on that is Jean-Luc De Meyer from Front 242. (And I am not a fan of Front 242 at all.)



It's really quite hard to describe just how good this album is. Gone are the guitar parts of Millennium (which never sounded right on a Front Line Assembly album.) The political-tinged lyrics are back, but not in the way they used to be. (If you listen carefully to State of Mind, which came out in 1988, you can hear a sample from a news show talking about how dangerous al-Qaeda is. That just stands out in my mind of how much Bill Leeb knows about what's going on in the world. How many people outside the Middle East knew what al-Qaeda was in 1988?) Future Fail, for instance, references an ambiguous future where people are ruled by a tyrant. ("They massacre, call it progress/They plunder and call it wealth") Then again, the lyrics (with a very few exceptions) have always been fairly ambiguous as to their subject.



Overall, though, this is an excellent album. Any FLA or industrial fan in general should have it in their collection."

Yep, this is a FLA album

nvcameron | Chicago, illinois USA | 06/20/2006

(4 out of 5 stars)

"FLA albums are pratically impossible to review due to the fact that you either like the sound of this band or you dont, needless to say all the trademark sounds & vocals are in place & its sort of non-stop & relentless & of course it takes awhile to grow on you. I really liked the direction the band was going on the last album & I wish they would have stayed on that course but this is still a fantastic album & is worth buying just to hear Jean-Luc DeMyer(Front242)sing on "Future Fail" which sounds better than anything on the last F242 album. FLA arent trying to reinvent the wheel on this album its just solid craftsmanship at work & fans of old school FLA should adore this."