Front Line Assembled - Page 2

In '94 Front Line took industrial aggression to its logical conclusion by adding balls-out metal guitar (by Devin Townsend and Don Harrison) to the electronic beats and synths on Millennium. Though less distinctive (echoes of Ministry, Nine Inch Nails, Skinny Puppy) than other of their work, the album stomps, roars and grinds through standouts like the title track, "Division of Mind," and "Sex Offender."

The duo's Noise Unit album (Strategy of Violence, also from '94) similarly crushes the spleen in an enjoyably vicious manner. In '95 Front Line switched to Metropolis Records and released Hard Wired, a varied and moody exercise in post-industrial electronic music, followed by the double-CD Live Wired in '96.

Fulber was replaced by Chris Peterson in Front Line for Flavour of the Weak: more excellent post-industrial music peppered with touches of trip-hop, trance and electronica. Re-Wind is a nice collection of the band's work on Metropolis.

Leeb began recording ambient music at home as early as '89. "I have a keyboard setup at home; when I was in a late-night mood with nothing else to do, I'd paint soundscapes and make sound collages," he says. Those collages - with Fulber joining in - developed into several Delerium albums. In '97 Leeb and Fulber created their most fully-realized album (in any genre) to date, in the form of Delerium's Karma: a wondrous album sampling exotic cultures and the recesses of time.

Reminiscent of, but transcending the time-and-culture shifting of Dead Can Dance and Enigma, Delerium's tribal and chant symphonies are sublime, with sneaky verse-chorus-verse structure hidden inside. In fact, after exploring every manner of beat- and riff-driven music, Leeb and Fulber have taken to writing great songs. Aided by the voices and words of Sarah McLachlan (an elegant "Silence"), Kristy Thirsk (the gorgeous "Enchanted," "Wisdom," "'Till the End of Time"), and the sampled voice of Dead Can Dance's Lisa Gerrard (the ethereal "Forgotten Worlds"), Karma delivers one soul-satisfying song after another.

Leeb and Fulber continue to deliver the goods as they roll through various permutations of electronic music; from the early pre-sampler days with primitive drum machines and analog synths, to the cutting-edge digital present, they have made music for the love of creating it. "We're like wild birds, we just fly around making music," says Leeb.

Article Author: Eric Olsen

Career media professional Eric Olsen is honored to be the founder and former publisher of Blogcritics.org, and former publisher of Technorati.com, which both rule. He is now editor, co-founder, and CEO of The Morton Report.

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