FRONT LINE ASSEMBLY

With their latest CD, "Hard Wired," the band has fused together elements from previous records into one powerful slab of electro-industrial music. I managed to chat with Bill just before FLA headed off for a full-length U.S. tour...

You guys just finished a tour in Europe. How did it go?
BILL LEEB: We were surprised. We hadn't been there in like four years and it was like our best tour ever. I would say 95% of all the shows were sold out and when we played in London, we played at the Astoria, which holds nearly 2,000 people. That's the kind of place where Blur and those bands were playing. Over the past few years, all this techno stuff has come along and a lot of the industrial bands have sort of disbanded, so I was surprised at how interested everyone was. It was a really nice experience.

What kind of set-up do you have live?
BL: Well, we usually have some sort of visuals, a big drum kit, Rhys has a pretty big keyboard set up and so do I, we have a guitarist and then we have all this metal percussion and strange looking towers built in this stuff. Actually, it's a pretty big rock show. I'm sure there's always...I'm sure Trent has got a bigger show (laughs. But I think, dollar for dollar, people will get their value. We try pretty hard.

On your U.S tour [begins March 23rd in Portland, Oregon, at La Luna], who will you be touring with?
BL: Die Krupps.and another band called Numb. So it will be quite the little rock-fest. It's been all over the internet. I've been reading reviews like, 'The new Ministry sucks, but at least Front Line are on tour.' (laughs) So, we're getting a good vibe. I'm thinking this will maybe be our best American tour yet.

What sort of song mix does the live show consist of?
BL: We play two encores in Europe and ended up playing for an hour and forty minutes. We were doing everything from "Body Count" to "Resist." We were doing songs from each album, basically. I don't know if you could call it 'playing the hits' (laughs), but we try and play a bunch of stuff from each record. We're getting a bit of a catalog, I guess, but I think people want to hear all different songs, versus just hearing all the new ones. It's more fun for us, too.

How closely do you follow the internet happenings?
BL: Oh, we have some friends who are on it. We'll just browse through it once in a while and get a laugh of all the people, you know, one person says 'This sucks!' and the next one comes on and says, 'No it doesn't!' It's like one big chat-line, the big industrial chat-line. (laughs) But I think it's great, as far as getting information, not just for music, but anything. Like for me, I am into land rovers, and I get guys from Australia, South Africa, with parts and stuff like that. I think it's going to become very commercialized, though. There's big money in it.

The music on "Hard Wired" is not as immediate as previous FLA albums. Was the writing process different on this one?
BL: The more records you do, the more ground you break, in some ways it becomes moer and more difficult to keep re-inventing yourself and try and come up with something new. Of course everything has been done to one extreme or another, but just within your realm, to get a new sound...I think, to me, this record sounds like an accumulation of the last four records. I think with the last record we scared a lot of people with our guitars, yet in Europe, when we played something like "Vigilante" or "Millenium," people were just freaking. I can't understand it. I think this record, I don't know another record out there rightnow that has that many samples and is that dense. I think we're just experimenting again, sticking a lot of weird samples and sounds in the songs.

The "Circuitry" single includes a couple of remixes by other artists [Haujobb and Biosphere]. I don't recall FLA doing that before.
BL: We've thought about that before, but time or whatever never seemed to permit us to do it. But Offbeat [the band's current label] was really motivated to do it, so we said 'okay, give it a try.' It's always important to try something new and never say never. I don't want to get to the point where, like with some CDs you have the same song remixed ten times. I think that's kind of bogus, you know.

How did you hook up with Offbeat? What happened with Roadrunner?
BL: With Roadrunner, their concept of what a band should be was different, because they only deal with metal bands. But with Offbeat, Stefan was just a big fan of FLA and Skinny Puppy and called me and gave the highest bid. For what I was looking for, this was the best thing and he really likes the music. We're going to be releasing a whole live CD cut with interviews that will be almost like a video, plus all the videos we've ever done and two new ones, all in a big box that will come out just before the summer. That, to me, seemed like these guys were really self-motivated and interested in promoting the band. Roadrunner should have been doing this kind of shit, but they never seemed motivated, never came up with ideas.

With the last Delerium album, it seemed like you guys had made some serious in-roads into the more mainstream market.
BL: Yeah, the last Delerium was up at the 75,000 in sales and it's going to go gold in Canada. We're just finishing a new one before we go on this American tour. We've got the same girl, Kristy [sp?], we've Sarah McLachlan and the woman from Dead Can Dance. From what I've heard, it's going to be a phenomenal record and I think this one might be the most successful record we ever do. A lot of people who like Delerium have never heard of Front Line, and I thnk that's perfect, you know. To me, that makes it worth having a side project. Some side projects just sound like a watered-down version of what they did before.

How did you hook up with Sarah McLachlan?
BL: When we were recording "Corrosion," she was recording her first album in the little studio in Vancouver. Actually, I met her the first time we did a Puppy tour and she was still living back east. They had just discovered her and she was just this young girl, barely out of high school. She bascially heard "Semantic Spaces" and asked to sing on the next one.

 ...and that's where my tape ran out. Bill is a very amiable guy and we continued to chat for a bit. Seems another collaboration w/ cEvin key of Skinny Puppy is a possibility, as he lives just downstairs from Mr. Leeb; it's just a matter of timing. Also, FLA has considered doing cover tunes in the past, but just hasn't managed to finish one for any of albums so far.

 Anyway, FLA are truly one of the pioneers in this field, so check them out on this tour. See r.m.i. or contact Cleopatra for a complete list of tour dates.