Canadian EBM bandFront Line Assembly arrive in the UK for seven dates this month under the banner of `Return to the UK`. It must be around seven years since they were last here but only playing the capitol so an expectant audience were awaiting these pioneers of electro-industrial music as they ventured to England`s second city.
It`s four years since the band`s last album `Mechanical Soul` so the band aren`t here to promote a new release which for me indicates that they`re here purely because the want to be and not have to. If you`ve released seventeen albums it`s gonna be a task to decide on a setlist that will sate most of the faithful’s appetite but I have to admit they pretty much did it tonight.
`Anthrocross` kicks us off but it`s really 1992`s `Final Impact` where frontman and singer Bill Leeb takes charge. `Neologic Spasm` and the blistering `Shifting through the Lens` quicky follow before the singer shares what he calls an old one and heads into the quite hypnotic `Digital Tension Dementia` from 1989`s `Gashed Senses & Crossfire` album, their first Billboard chart appearance in the U.S.
The singer dedicates `Plasticity` to friends in the audience which races along before the singer shared the more reflective `Bio-Mechanic`. The home stretch included the pulsating anthemic `Resist` and absorbing `Deadened` whose line “Don’t take them alive” really gets into your subconscious. The show closes with `Mindphaser` but this enthusiastic audience demanded more and indeed the band responded with a kind of two song encore with `Gun` before sending us all home with `Body Count` a song that harks back to the beginning.
I hadn`t seen FLA before and apart from the hypnotic and rhythmic heavy chords and pounding drumbeat, I was really taken by Bill Leeb`s stage presence as he commanded the audience with his menacing presence as his stalks the stage along with bashing out a percussive tempo. It`s nearly forty years since the band were formed and there seems to be no let up.
There are five more dates left so you need to get a step on if you wanna catch these industrial-electronic trailblazers before they return home.
