Artificial Soldier

Front Line Assembly

Product Details

• Audio CD (June 20, 2006)
• Original Release Date: June 20, 2006
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Metropolis Records
• ASIN: B000FFP014
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #108,151 in Music (See Bestsellers in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
The best FLA release the electronic industrial community has seen in over a decade. Heavy pounding beats, atmospheric strings, percolating melodies, dynamic synths, and Bill Leeb's trademark vocals couldn't be fused together any tighter if you tried to do it at an atomic level. As if all those factors weren't enough, two guest vocalists appear: Eskil Simonsson from Covenant and Jean-Luc De Meyer from Front 242.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Revitalized my interest., July 25, 2006

By	J. Mcdaniel "life explorer" (GA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Yep, this is a FLA album, June 20, 2006

By	nvcameron (Chicago, illinois USA) - See all my reviews

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.

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An all around great album..., January 3, 2007

By	Steven R. Reeves (Lansdale, Pa USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.