Customer Reviews

Artificial Soldier

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

All the ingredients that were missing on the last two FLA releases are here on this release; aggression, strength, and hostility. After listening to the entire cd a couple of times, it is impossible for me to pick a favorite track. I really like the fact that Chris Peterson is back for this release, not to mention Greg Reely's mixing talents. This could easily turn into on of my all time FLA favorite cds. If you like FLA's early work, you'll love this one.

This album is almost more reminicent of older FLA. Though not quite as good as TNI or Hard Wired it definately has resurrected some of that old sound. It is an improvement over their previous two 'Epitaph' and 'Civilization' which were pretty good, but for FLA sub-par.

This is why I'm a big fan of FLA. After twenty years of making music they're still putting out strong releases to keep their fans happy. Hardcore fans seem to have wanted another Hard Wired and so FLA answered. Though it may not be as good as their material from the early to mid nineties, and there may never be, FLA is still going strong. Artificial Soldier is at least a 4 and a half star album if not five even if it's not their best ever. But there can be only one best. That's the definition of best. This album however still exceeded my expectations.

This album definitely brings back some of the aggression that FLA has been missing for some time now, but I don't think it goes far enough in that direction. Also, the two tracks with guest vocalists are not worthy of the FLA name; not because of the vocals, but because the music is just not up to par. You can tell that the music was written and recorded separately from the vocals because the music is fairly generic in both. Also, both tracks rely on the tired "four on the floor" beat which is usually a crutch used by lesser talented industrial bands. FLA is usually wiser about falling back to this lowest-common-denominator beat, but in these two guest tracks they completely drop the ball. But other than those two songs, I'd say this is a quality FLA release. Certainly better than the previous album, which had a great opening track but then a bunch of forgettable, unenergetic filler. For context, I discovered FLA when their latest album was Caustic Grip, so I've been following them for quite a while.

With their previous studio release, Civilization, FLA diverted far from their seemingly natural progressive sound with a more accessible palette of dance beats and toned-down "Delerium-like" instrumentation.

Artificial Soldier, however, seemingly picks right up where the 2001 release, Epitaph, left off - with a bit more of an industrial edge while still maintaining the fundamental dance groove heard on Civilization.

In A.S., Leeb and crew think further outside the box by recruiting EBM veteran Jean-Luc De Meyer from Front 242 (Future Fail) and futurepop pioneer Eskil Simonsson from Covenant (The Storm), adding a new texture to an already familiar soundscape known to FLA enthusiasts.

A.S. mostly consists of the old familiar FLA instrumentation and vocal treatments...the songs remain true to style and are dark, bleak, very textured, lush and mechanical. Something I might expect as an FLA fan! On a scale of 1-10, I give A.S. a 6 in innovation - has a somewhat bottled sound that's already been heard on older FLA tracks. But on the same scale, I give it a near 10 in overall satisfaction! I'm sure I'll be enjoying this album for years to come!

If "Civilization" left you cold, then this one should do the trick.
Chris Peterson is back, and thankfully so. Rhys Fulber has his place with Leeb, but for my money "Flavour of the Weak" and "Implode" cannot be beaten. "Epitaph was a nice companion piece to those 2 discs, but "Civilization" was a real step backwards for a band who usually pushed electronic/industrial boundaries into new and uncharted territories. "Artificial Soldier" does a really nice job of putting Front Line back on track.

I don't like to talk about FLA albums in terms of "returning to form" as some do, as I think that's largely in the ear of the beholder and depends a lot on which of their many albums one considers "their form". I prefer to take their lifetime output as a whole and simply acknowledge that, as with any artist, some albums have been stronger than others, some weak albums have had strong tracks, and some strong albums have had weak tracks.

That so prefaced -- I do find this to be one of their stronger albums. As a whole I would rank it maybe just behind Implode (which I in turn rank only behind Caustic Grip, Gashed Senses, and Tactical Neural Implant, not necessarily in that order), and maybe just ahead of Millennium.

In addition I'd say two songs from this album, "Dopamine" and "Future Fail", are among the very best that they've done and would certainly have a place if the group was ever to release another best-of compilation.

A quick run down of Artificial Soldier:

1. Unleashed - good opening, similar to the first song in Civilisation

2. Low Life - fierce song, very prodigy-like; Hardwired and Epitaph is
so obvious here.

3. Beneath the rubble - big-beats; sounds like Everything Must Perish
from Epitaph.

4. Dissension - an interesting track, so intense; Hardwired, Implode,
Epitaph & Civilisation are present here.

5. Buried Alive - drum'n bass FLA style; reminiscent of Insolence from
Epitaph with a feel of Implode & a little bit of
Hardwired.

6. Dopamine - twisted trip-hop beats; like Dissension, all four previous
efforts makes this the next intense track on the album.

7. Social Enemy - fast song; [Epitaph + FLAvour of the Weak + Hardwired]

8. Future Fail - this is where FLA evolves their sound, so fresh and
"armageddonical"; almost like a gloomy version of Dead
Planet from Epitaph

9. The Storm - dance-floor fodder; another evolving track.

10. Humanity (World War Three) - slow song; very Implode & Epitaph-
like.

FLA has changed a lot over the decade but modern FLA listeners should just take it for granted that every album they release combines the "electronicity" of Tactical Neural Implant, the metal guitars of Millenium & the experimental edge of FLAvour of the Weak (which builds most of FLA sound anyway).


i so love it...