Front Line Assembly

Will they, won't they. Ever since Rhys Fulber left Front Line Assembly in 1995 to pursue various production role's and a solo project, fans have patiently waited for what seemed like an inevitable re-union. Meanwhile, Leeb teamed up with Chris Peterson and soldiered on with the big-selling ethereal project, Delerium, and 3 further FLA albums. Whilst it's now unsuitable to characterise Front Line Assembly as a mere industrial act, there's little doubt that the tag will inextricably hang from the duo's neck forever. From their debut 1987 release, The Initial Command, FLA have brutalised, distorted and disfigured electronic music, sometimes astonishing us with their technical wizzardry, sometimes aggrivating us with their absurd lyrical waxing. And yet, like the wolf who always knows where it's next meal is coming from, they've effortlessly sat on top of the hill, looking down upon the plethora of industrial bands that still regard them with a sense of awe. This month sees Front Line Assembly release their twelfth studio album, 'Civilization'. Yet in all this time few have been willing to try and find out what the real Bill Leeb is like, instead preferring to bombard their headlines with the usual cliched industrial barb. Barcode go one step further, into the mind of Bill Leeb... Civilization, the forthcoming Front Line Assembly album, was the recording of it a relatively quick and easy process? Since Rhys lives in LA now, he’d just come up for 2 weeks at a time and we would get together in our space here and write. Then he would take things back with him and then he would MP3 me things. I guess, because of this whole digital era now, you can work and send the other guy parts. It became almost like an overseas type of scenario. In a way it was kind of, maybe more easy, because we weren’t sitting in a space crammed up for months on end. I suppose a lot of people have an image of you two in the old days stuck in an underground dungeon, slaving away on all these different projects? Well, we sort of were. I mean it was better doing that than having a real job, right? (laughs). I guess it’s changed a little, and now Rhys has bought a house and it came with a studio separate from the house, so he’s pretty excited about that. So next time I’ll be going down there. Has Rhys changed much living in LA? I think down there you sort of gotta play the LA crowd. It’s not as subtle and withdrawn as Vancouver is, you really have to get out and convince people you’re the person for the job. So how does Civilization differ from previous FLA albums? Pretty different in the sense that Rhys bought the latest digital Pro Tools software, so basically the whole thing was mixed on there, because Greg (Reely) has one. So we did a lot of it on there, whereas in the old days you’d have a little Atari and you’d hook up the analogue gear and you’d sequence things and then you’d sample it on the S1000. So it’s pretty different now, it’s all done digitally. Pro Tools is the most expensive music production system isn’t it? Well it is, but it’s also the cheapest thing because you can invest between $5,000-$15,000 - but at the end of the day if you can write, record and mix your album on there that’s pretty cheap in comparison to the $70,000 you’d spend in a studio. All the studio’s over here are going out of business, even the biggest ones in LA are for sale because everybody’s just doing at home. Pro Tools is killing the studio business, especially for electronic acts. Could you do a Delerium album on Pro Tools? Well, we did pretty much do Chimera like that as well. All the live strings were done in New York, they’d send them back on MP3 or whatever and then we’d just load them into the computer and move them around, even though they was played by a real orchestra. Ironically enough, when we mastered our record, Brian Gardner, who does Snoop Dogg and all these kind of things, he basically runs the whole thing through an analogue system. I know bands like Depeche Mode like using tape, because when you hit tape it changes the sound and it gives it a warm analogue sound. We mixed it (Civilization) digitally and we actually tried to master it digitally and it sounded very brittle, very dry, so he did it analogue, with analogue plug-ins, and now all of a sudden it sounds exactly the way we wanted it to. Maybe it’s the combinationof the combination of the whole thing that gets it the way you want it to sound. Would you say it’s an Industrial album, or is that term irrelevant now? I don’t know, what’s relevant? People still use the word rock’n’roll don’t they? It’s a little strange because the last two records I did with Chris Peterson I didn’t think they were all that bad. I’m just not so sure if this whole scene and the notoriety of it all is kinda like…. I remember the day when we got two singles of the week in Melody Maker with Front Line. I guess those days are long gone (laughs). The record itself in some ways sounds old-skool, but obviously the programming and the way it’s put together is probably the most hi-tec. I don’t think we took any big leaps of faith as far as trying to do something that we never represented, so if you like the way Front Line ever sounded then I think you will really like the record alot. If you’re hoping for a Fat Boy Slim record, then it’s not gonna happen. I think the purists will really like it, there’s some really angry bits and lots of hard, fast bits. But, we didn’t try too hard y’know? We just got together and did it the way we used to. When we did the album Karma for Delerium, we just got together, turned on our gear and after 6 weeks we had a record that still sells well now. I suppose that if you try too hard the results can sound a bit faked? Well y’know, our first sort of hit with Delerium, Flowers Become Screens, it was the first time we did a song that had a shuffle beat, where everything is in three’s. It’s so much work to try and put sequences that are in three’s that we thought "let’s just leave it", we’d never done anything that sparse. Then we gave it to a singer, she sang on it and it was a hit – so the ones that you fuss over for hours on end nobody cares about. I think sometimes you just kinda gotta, not grab things too tight, because at the end of the day you never know anyway. With Rhys, he actually said, when we finished this record he’d be in to do another one, because it was fun for him. We don’t have to do demo’s, we don’t have A&R guys saying, “I don’t like this song” and “Where’s the hits?”. Do all the tracks have vocals on? I think two songs are instrumentals. I read somewhere there was a limited edition version? No, I think that’s wrong. Amazon.com posted it - they’re pretty reliable usually. But, you know? does it matter anyways? The day after it comes out everybody’s gonna be able to pul it off the Internet (laughs). I don’t wanna sound old, but I remember the days waiting in Vancouver at our local import shop for the weekly stuff to come from the UK, whether it was the new Fad Gadget single or Simple Minds. And if you didn’t buy the album, you weren’t gonna get it from anywhere. I don’t like to listen to clips before an album comes out - it ruins it for me. It’s like watching a preview to a movie when they show you all the best parts. I agree. it takes the whole mystique out of the record doesn’t it? Videos are bad for that too, they can sometimes give you way the wrong image of what the band is like live. I just remember waiting faithfully for my favourite Portion Control or Neubaten record or whatever, and when it came you went home and you put it on and you enjoyed it, and it was a big deal to have it because it came on coloured vinyl. Now, in ten minutes it’s on the Internet, you can get it everywhere. I dunno, it’s not the money for me, losing money on it, even when there was no MTV, you had to go out to see the band. And now it’s like, why go out and see a band when you can see everything on Muchmusic? But, I guess, that’s err… progress? When I heard the single Maniacal, the whole mood and the vocals in some parts made me wonder whether this was intended to be the last FLA album? Well, I’ve heard so many bands say this is my last tour, you better come and see the band. I like that thing - "never say never". I really kind of believe in that. Only time will tell, if we sell 20 records worldwide and nobody cares and Rhys does his thing, I do mine. I don’t think we’ve thought about it a lot. We started this thing and we thought we should do one more just in case if it did end at least we did it together. Nowadays, with the music business the way it is, there’s no guarantees, you don’t know who’s gonna do what or who’s gonna like what. It does have a lot of qualities about it in that sense, but I don’t think the market is that big. This whole scene was a lot bigger in the late eighties, early nineties. My impression was from the artwork, with a nuclear explosion on it. Which could be construed as the end of ‘something’? Yeah, it very well could be. We haven’t had a lot of momentum in a long time, especially with Rhys focusing on his thing and doing the whole Delerium tour. I think most of the kids that liked Caustic Grip are probably working in banks now right? (laughs). I don’t know if I wanna be the Mick Jagger of the Industrial scene. I’ll just be curious what people think if this music will sound dated today, if they respond. You know the whole Europop thing, where VNV Nation basically took over where all this stuff left off. For example, I was a huge fan of The Future Sound Of London, and I just thought that music should have gone further. From Dead Cities, that stuff was brilliant right? So, I guess you never know with artists and music and time. You’ve just gotta put it out there and let it go and do something else, if you get some good feedback great. I think for any hardcore people, they’ll like it. As far as the programming goes, I think it’s pretty seamless. I mean it’s not like we were ever massive to begin with y’know? Well within the genre you were massive, but then in the big wide world there’s always gonna be a limited audience for that sort of music anyway? Yeah, that’s really true. I saw an image shot of the cover to Civilization, it’s quite nihilistic isn’t it? Is that the theme to the album? Yeah, oh yeah. I’m still down on the world. I feel like everything’s cheap. People are cheap, most of the music out there’s super-pretentious and everything is about how good you look, pre-packaged. All the wars are self-serving, what can I get out of it. It’s hard to sometimes just really be positive about things y’know? I think you touched on this with the ‘Everything Must Perish’ single a few years ago. Lyrically you were on a bit of a downer, it’s actually one of your best lyrics. I just feel like the more I know the less I wanna know and the more disappointed I get with things. To me, things keep getting worse than better. So the content of the new album is tied up with your views on America’s foreign policy is it? Yeah, alot of it yeah. It doesn’t make any sense to me. You’re living in a shell. Over here, it’s on the talk shows and the news constantly, That’s all they talk about, after a while it drives you crazy and you so you err…sort of become pessimistic about everything. Canada’s pretty neutral - it’s a peace-loving nation. I think America’s always been like, the Empire, they do what they want. Even with us y’know? Anything we bring to them they put a super big tax on, so we get affected in other ways. The world’s a hellhole and I’m living in it (laughs). I’m sure other people are more upbeat, but I think Front Line from day one has always been like that. It’s actually a good way to release some of your angst. I definitely think so. It’s better than going out and taking out a whole building right? (laughs). It’s good therapy. There’s so much nice music in the world and happy music, all about sex and love, there isn’t enough realist bands around that put a different spin on things that even actually get heard. You listen to what’s new and hot and it’s either pop or rap, I dunno, I’m getting pretty sick of it. I think there’s still a huge underground culture though, if you really want good music there’s plenty of it out there but you just have to go and search for it instead. Bands like Squarepusher, Boards Of Canada… etc. I absolutely love the Chris Cunnigham Squarepusher video. There’s a DVD out and there's some great ones. I wish I could afford him, he’d be the guy I go to. He’s got it down to a fine art, the one he did for Autechre with the robots, the first time I saw that I went “woahhhh, what is that”, and I don’t do that too often. I think he’s doing some short films now for Warp. I understand you toured with Delerium quite recently, was that an enjoyable experience? Yeah, almost every show was sold out. We started in Vancouver with a big sold out show. It’s totally different from Front Line, it’s very positive, there’s a lot of people that are vert complementary. It’s night and day different, Front Line was very chaotic and bombastic and all kinds of weirdo’s and freaks loitering around, and you walk on stage not knowing whether it was hated or loved. That's positive too, but in a different way y’know? a bunch of young, angry guys out there. Delerium’s very peaceful and surreal and you get a lot more females, it’s a very mixed crowd. Delerium’s definitely been a money maker for us. It took a little getting used to, we’ve had all these singers and our bass player now, Rhys’ girlfriend, is playing with Pink now. They did the Billboard awards last night and Saturday Night Live. The only boring part was Sting. I saw the Euro ones with Kraftwerk. Yeah, I’m going to see them in March. Where are they playing? In Brixton Academy in London? They just stood behind these computers and they didn’t move, and I didn’t know if it was real people or someone had to prod em’ with a stick to get some reaction. But the music’s cool y’know, it’s not like youre gonna expect those guys to get in your face. Well, they’re about 60 now. Kraftwerk have been going since 1970. That’s way back, where you born then even? Erm, I was about 2. I read that they built their own synthesisers, because there weren’t any. Well that I believe, even in the late seventies it was pretty like sparse as far as synths go. Pink Floyd had one of those Putney’s, I think that was one of the sort of experimental synths.

"I think my happiest was my teenage years, When I didn’t know anything and I just walked around all day like a goof."

Well it would be nice to see you guys in London, have you go any plans at all? Well SPV’s putting out our record in Europe, so I don’t know if that’s good or bad. Actually, some company sent me a huge thing about if we wanna tour they’d be into it. And Rhys actually asked me about wanting to do a fews shows and one of the guys he’s become good friends with was the drummer for Nitzer Ebb (Julian Beeston). There’s all this chit chat, I think we’ll know within the first week of release whether we’re gonna be an item or whether we’re gonna be quickly discarded. So it’s theoretical at the moment, depending on sales and how you feel the album’s received? Yeah, sales within a limit, because like I said, it’s very deceptive now with people stealing or burning. But I think just the general opinion of the most hardcore fans will be the ones that are gonna dictate whether there’s any longevity in the band. There's not many sources of information to help you find that out even is there? Yeah, the whole Mindphaser web page, have you ever gone on there? I’m mean they’re already waiting, they already got the tracklisting. Is this a web site you look at frequently? Yeah, that’s the best one to go to. I think that’s where all the hardcore’s are that don’t have anything else to do. How do you feel about that, reading people’s opinions on you and sort of picking your work apart, do you find that quite interesting in a way? Well, sometimes you read it and at first you’re kind of “huh? are these guys nuts”. It goes from shock, to disbelief to like, “who gives a shit”. But at the end of the day it’s public. Once you’re out there everybody’s entitled to an opinion and god knows everybody has one. I’ve looked at alot of forums in my time and Mindphaser could be a lot worse. I think we’ll know within the first week whether people like the band or think Front Line’s toast. Either way, we went to the Front Line’s and we gave, if it’s enough great, if it isn’t then y’know, at least we didn’t do a pop album and try and cash in. What did you think about Chimera, which didn’t seem to be as well received as previous Delerium albums? Well, I know that in Europe Nettwerk are just not happening these days. The thing’s still selling pretty decent in America. Even Delerium’s kind of a weird entity because when we did Semantic Spaces we were just killing time. We sat there, we literally turned a few buttons and put it out there and you read back people going “Oh, this records so great” and me and Rhys are looking and scratching eachother’s heads and thinking “What’s wrong with all these people”, we were just killing time. So when you wrote Semantic Spaces you didn’t think it was that good and you didn’t think much would come of it? No, no, no. We just felt like we were waiting between a Front Line tour and this and that. Because I remember the day I bought that album and played it and how I felt at the time. It just seemed so fresh and different. I know. But y’know I’m the same way. I’ll hear a record by a band and then I’ll hear a guy in the band go “yeah, this record was total crap” and I’m like “are you nuts”? I dunno, maybe artists get too tied to records, sometimes you lose a vision or focus of what’s really good. I thought, to me, Chimera, I put a lot work into that and had all these people on it. It was the most expensive record we ever made and then you don’t get the reaction you want. If I can be honest, although I liked alot of Chimera, I think sometimes it got a little too poppy. Karma still had a bit of a dark edge to it, and even Poem to a smaller extent. But everyone’s seems to have a different opinion about it. (laughs) Isn’t that the way the world is? We had such a huge track with Silence right? I mean it went to Number one in five counries in the world. And then you’re asked to be on Top Of The Pops and BBC London plays that song in 2001 to bring in the New Year. You kinda wonder how much more can you achieve in some ways? Did you feel when you were recording Chimera that maybe you were chasing that a little bit? Erm… yeah (laughs). Yeah, because now you’ve raised the bar. In the top 10 chart in Britain only All Saints kept us out of the No 1 spot. You’ve done this now, can you do this again and go further. Maybe that can become, "chasing the dragon" as they say? I just think maybe we had our 15 minutes of fame, like Andy Warhol said. What were the reasons behind Chris Peterson leaving Front Line Assembly and Rhys taking his place? Well me and Rhys started working when he was 16 years old. I think we worked for like 14 years together. I think he finally felt like he needed to go out and start his own life, his own band, be a producer, be his own entity. And I think, with me he always felt like I was his big brother and Front Line/Delerium were always my things. So I said, “go west young man” and he picked up his pack sack and went to search his own riches and fame. And with Fear Factory and stuff he did really well. Chris did a few tours with Front Line back in the days of Tactical Neural, so he was all ways around and we just started to work together. We did Flavour Of The Weak, but I don’t think that record was received that well. I quite like that album actually? In fact I prefer it to the last couple. Really? Why’s that? Y’know I get such mixed... I feel so mixed about that record, I thought maybe that’s the one that sunk Front Line. Then I got some people who really like it, you know what? I’m confused now. I think it’s because it’s completely different to all the other FLA albums, it’s got a very heavy technological slant on it. You were really fucking about with your machines on that album weren’t you? and I really liked that loss of control. (laughs) Oh really? It’s just weird, being the artist you can’t step away from anything y’know. When I used to get Portion Control records I think I could be a way better critic than the band could. I’d hear things and go “fuck, this is great”, and they’d go “oh no, we don’t like it”. It’s just that raw, weird energy they had y’know? Anyway, I think me and Chris just kinda drifted apart. He wanted to his Decree thing. I think Chris is really like an Industrial purist, he doesn’t pull any punches. He’s like “screw all you guys, I’m only doing industrial, I don’t give a shit if you don’t like it or not, that’s what I like, I’m doing this only for me”. And in some ways, he’s the most honest guy. I think we’re always thinking should we be famous, can we make money, but not Chris, Chris is a total bad moon guy. But he’s a purist and he just wanted to focus on his own record. I have an open door policy, I don’t ever burn any bridges. It’s only music at the end of the day, I don’t hold grudges. The more money you make out of it is the one thing that’s most likely to lead to arguments within a band? Oh greed. But it’s so weird y’know because you're basically doing the same thing you were 10 years ago but everybody’s got such huge demands now with contracts and money they want, but the records don’t sell any better, and the products not better, but everyone wants more. In the old days, literally, people would show up and they’d be just happy to be on an album, but now the lawyers show up and the 50-page contract and if you sell this many records they want this much more money. It kinda really takes the fun out of making music. Well that could be changing because artists are now going on their own, dispensing with record labels completely. They get their own web site, promote themsleves and get a small promotional company to do promotion and print CD’s for them. Well I think record stores are gonna disappear because there’s that big service now in the states with virtual CD’s. Downloading a CD or a song is starting to outsell the record stores. Rather than buy a whole album they’d download a whole song for 99 cents. But then the artist loses an album sale. Well, I guess everything's different. I wonder if it will go from one extreme to another, where it becomes a virtual thing and you don’t even get physical CD’s anymore, you don’t even get artwork. There's too many men in the middle right? When your making albums now do you still look out for new equipment, keyboards and samplers etc…? Well Rhys is always buying gear. He just bought this new Waldorf, called the Q+. He said it was the best sounding one out of the whole Waldorf line. There’s that new Minimoog now, it’s like the old one except it has all Midi and you can save everything. I mean I’ve got two lockers full of old gear, I don’t pull that shit out anymore. Have you ever thought about selling it on Ebay? Nah, I mean what for? One day when I’m dead I want to have a huge auction, they’ll pull all these old gnarly synths covered in cobwebs and they’ll go “wow, look at all this shit, who was this guy?”. Ebay, shmeebay, one day I’ll wanna use it and I’ll have sold it. Is there a dream piece of equipment that hasn’t been invented yet which you wish they would make? Well I think Pro Tools is kinda like in that zone, because you can sample with it, you can mix with it, you can move things around. You can do pretty much anything with it. Especially when you get into the upper levels of it and you can keep building on it. Every studio has to have one now if you wanna be competitive. Looking back, during what period of your life would you say was the happiest for you? I think my happiest was my teenage years, When I didn’t know anything and I just walked around all day like a goof. I never felt more than like, “do I have enough money for smokes and what club are we going to tonight”. Before I was even doing music to me was the most magical thing, because I didn’t know anything about anything andI could just go and see a band and go “wow, these guys are great”. So when I was young and naïve and I looked at bands, that’s when I had the most fun. Isn’t ignorance bliss? To me it kinda was, I was so unjaded. Me and Cevin from Skinny Puppy would go and see all the punk bands and stuff and it was just pure entertainment. Once you get in the business you get critical and you know how things work and it kinda takes the magic out y’know?

"Yeah, oh yeah. I’m still down on the world. I feel like everything’s cheap. People are cheap, most of the music out there’s super-pretentious and everything is about how good you look."

What about the early days with FLA, writing Tactical Nueral Implant? Yeah, we were pretty naïve. We thought we could change the world and everthing we did was great. But now I’m jaded beyond belief (laughs). It kinda sucks, sometimes I wish I could just erase my mind and start all over again. Y’know like that Arnold movie (laughs). You don’t have any ambitions to be a father? Umm, not really, no. Even that, I’m not convinced. Y’know people have kids so when you’re old you won’t be lonely, and then I see people sitting on benches and their kids haven’t talked to them for 20 years and their just waiting for him to die so they can collect their will. I think everything’s different now, teenagers, kids, everybody’s different, it’s not like the old days. It’s a waaaay different set up now. There's no such thing as teenagers, kids when they’re 15 years old are grown up. Yeah, I’ve got a little nephew now, when you see him it’s so refreshing to communicate with a human being that's been untarnished. You see what I mean? I know, it's because it's over exposure. Kids by the time they’re seven have to make too many decisions - and video games are all about violence. So what would you like to be doing in 10 years from now, idealistically? (laughs) That’s a good one. I’m not even really sure to tell you the truth. I always thought maybe it’d be fun to be an isolationist and get a big piece of property somewhere and tune the whole world out. I’ve thought about that a few times. Grow your own food. Have you seen that movie, ’28 Days Later’? Yeah, with the Zombies? Yeah, what you think of that? I thought it was great. Yeah that was pretty funny huh? I loved how like in the UK they managed to make no traffic. It’s great when you can do that all digitally. When was the last time you saw that huh? Living in London, never. I know, wasn’t that kind of of surreal to see no people, no cars. Everytime I’ve been to London it’s so busy there, y’know? To see that alone was super-effective, forget the zombies. Do you think you need to write more music to survive financially, and is there a pressure on you in that respect? Not a huge one. Strangely enough I don’t feel like I need enough or want as much now as I might have 15 years ago. You get to a level where you got a house, you got three cars, how much do you need? I go for a trip once in a while. Maybe that’s why I’m not driven enough to produce or go and do a lot more work. Because of this never-ending thing of the more you got the more you want, you’re never happy anyway, you might as well just try and be happy with what you have - and if a few good things come your way, great. Do you remember the Wave Gothic Treffen Festival, where a guy took your place on the stage? (laughs) Well, I think for logistical reasons, I dunno if anybody can really say what happened y’know? All I can say is that I really lost confidence in Front Line. The whole thing felt wrong to me. It was a strange time. I thought maybe Front Line Assembly had become really redundant. I used to always feel like Front Line Assembly was an important thing to me and to the fans and to our music scene. I really believed in the whole Test Dept., Neubaten era. It did have an importance, with Front 242 at first. I just felt like Front Line was part of that and the whole genre had dissipated into a small, quasi-modo fashion base of few people. I still feel like I’m an artist and wanna feel viable, so I think I had a bit of an identity loss y’know? Like in that Spinal Tap (laughs) “Is this a fucking joke”. I think it happens to all artists. I think a lot of people in the crowd had an identity crisis too when the other Bill Leeb came on? You think? It’s one of those comedy things I see pictures of. I think that was a Spinal Tap moment. Uh-huh. I think it should be treasured. I know; that’s what I think too. It’s such an unusual thing to happen. (laughs) I don’t know if it’s ever happened! Pretty bizarre right, I had no idea. Maybe in a few more years I’ll elaborate. For now I’ll just say it was a bit of an identity crisis. Literaly I guess there was right? (laughs). Maybe some people didn’t even realise, y’know what I mean? So what are your next objectives, to work on Delerium? Well, we’re probably gonna do one more for sure. But I think we’re gonna do something quite different. I’m kinda bored with where we went to with it now. We both feel like, we’re gonna do what comes naturally and make it a real dubby, electronic thing. A bit darker? Yeah, we’re only gonna maybe have a couple of tracks with vocals and just do what we wanna do and forget the whole pop thing for a while. I just don’t wanna go any further down that road. I just wanna do something more moody. I thought it would be fun to go down this road, but it’s not as much fun as I thought it’d be. You get too caught up in the whole pop single thing. It’s really not where we’re from and I don’t really wanna go into any more of that unchartered territory, because once you go past a certain point you can’t come back. I still think Chimera was walking that tightrope. Besides, we’ve done it, so there’s no point making another one like it, it would be a waste of time.

Front Line Assembly interview Barcode 2004 ©
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