Front 242

“Moment of terror is the beginning of life”: this is the phrase printed on the inner sleeve of the first vinyl edition of “Front By Front”, the undisputed masterpiece by Front 242 released on October 28, 1988 through Red Rhino Europe in Belgium and Wax Trax! Records in the US. At the time, the band - made up of Daniel Bressanutti, Jean-Luc De Meyer, Patrick Codenys and Richard 23 (born Richard Jonckheere) - cut a decidedly menacing figure on stage: a paramilitary look reminiscent of riot police squads. Their mix of mirrored sunglasses, punk mohawks, knee pads and bulletproof vests, which they had already adopted in the early Eighties, helped shape that cyberpunk iconography born from the pens of writers like William Gibson and films like “Mad Max” and “Terminator”. If you were looking for the ideal soundtrack to that brand of dystopian science fiction, “Front By Front” would undoubtedly be the most obvious choice, alongside the more cerebral “Buried Dreams” by Clock Dva, which would come out just a year later.

“Front By Front” is also one of the most representative works of Electronic Body Music, a genre that's hard to pin down, standing apart from both synth-pop and new wave, channeling all the drive of punk into electronic music in a kind of desecrating, unsettling “paramilitary hedonism”. This is the more inhuman, aggressive side of industrial music, of which Ebm is a sort of necessary evolution. It's clear that bands like Front 242 had far more in common with Throbbing Gristle screaming “Discipline” than with the synth-pop of Human League or the Ultravox of Midge Ure.

Front 242's formula is as simple and direct as it is seminal: take the lesson of Deutsch-Amerikanische Freundschaft, the celebrated band of the German Neue Deutsche Welle, and experiment with the new possibilities that the analog technology of the era allowed in terms of sampling, mixing and everything else, all while never losing sight of the adrenaline and the dancefloor.

After their debut album “Geography” from 1982, which moved within an electronic new wave/industrial framework similar to that of early-Eighties Cabaret Voltaire, Front 242 released “No Comment” (1984) and “Official Version” (1987), two albums that would significantly shape the evolution of their sound. In a 1984 interview, they described their music with the term “Electronic Body Music”, partly borrowing from the term coined a few years earlier by D.A.F., namely “Körpermusik”.

Following a slew of remixes and the trailblazing single “Headhunter”, the band released “Front By Front”, their defining album, by which point they had already earned a reputation as an uncompromising and thoroughly sui generis live act, capable of getting crowds dancing just as easily as they could send shows spiraling into brawls - much like what Nitzer Ebb were doing in Britain around the very same time.

The video for “Headhunter”, shot by Dutch photographer Anton Corbijn, did much to build Front 242's reputation. In the black-and-white clip, the architecture of Brussels' Atomium and Berlaymont building provides the backdrop for the band's movements and those of a young woman sporting an odd egg-shaped headpiece. The video owes an obvious debt to surrealist imagery, though according to Richard 23 the whole thing supposedly came about through a misunderstanding worthy of the best Dadaist tradition: the director apparently heard "egg hunter" instead of "headhunter". Either way, the song's lyrics are strikingly blunt and direct, fusing tribal warfare with aggressive corporate recruitment slogans, parodying what Jean-Luc De Meyer would later call "the ruthless world of men in suits and ties", as the lyrics themselves make clear:

One, you lock the target, two, you bait the line

Three, you slowly spread the net and four, you catch the man

Freeze, shoot to kill or die, freeze, shoot to kill or die

The raw, direct approach of their cut-up technique made them politically suspect in some quarters, but they always denied any ideological agenda in their work, claiming they simply wanted to take a pitiless snapshot of their times, partly through a ruthless, nihilistic use of sampling. For instance, on “Welcome To Paradise V 1.0”, included on the CD edition (it had been the B-side of the “Headhunter” 12"), Front 242 sampled the voice of American preacher Farrell Griswold, often mistakenly identified as Jimmy Swaggart, who was accused at the time of having sex with a prostitute. There was clearly some irony in that sampled voice sternly declaring “No Sex Until Marriage!”.

However, “Front By Front” isn't just “Headhunter” (whose original vinyl edition included only one of its several versions, namely V 3.0). “Until Death (Us Do Part)”, “Circling Overland” and “Terminal State”, for example, are three of the Belgians' signature tracks, substantial hits that have stood the test of time and helped cement EBM as a genuinely successful genre, at least across Northern Europe.

The album is mostly in English but also features one track sung in German, “Im Rhythmus Bleiben”, which sounds like a sadistic drill instructor screaming at you to keep the beat. The sampled voice shouting “alles was drin ist” is taken from a 1981 German war film, “Das Boot” (U-Boot 96), set during the Second World War. It's as if Kraftwerk had been drafted and sent to the front to fight World War Three. Indeed, the atmosphere conjured up by the lyrics is one of imminent nuclear conflict, given that we were still in the closing stages of the Cold War. The adrenaline rush barely masked the paranoia of a generation raised in the shadow of Mitteleuropean suburbs. In “Circling Overland”, for instance, they declared:

Nerves connected to the center, we are tied to the machine

Invisible and silent, circling overland

The planemakers designed us to outturn and outmaneuver

Intruders in the skies, intruders in our skies

Still on a Cold War note, the same year “Front By Front” came out, the single “Never Stop” - later included on the 1989 CD edition in its “V 1.1” version - went so far as to parody American chauvinism and imperialism.

While a track like “Felines” still carries a post-D.A.F. new wave aftertaste, pieces such as “First In/ First Out” and especially “Work 01” are experiments that would come to be seen as foundational for the then-emerging rave scene and for Belgian new beat.

Front 242 are widely recognised as important and influential figures across much of the electronic music of the Nineties and beyond, particularly for their ability to bring a bold, adrenaline-charged approach to the genre. The numerous remixes and versions of tracks like “Work 01” (later reworked into “Work 242 N.Off Is N.Off” and “Work 242”, included as bonus tracks on the 1989 CD edition) served as genuine masterclasses in style and a source of inspiration for many DJs and producers, especially within techno-industrial circles.

Further underlining the surreal, almost subconscious quality of the band's work, it's worth noting that “Work 01” ends with a sample of a smooth voice saying, in perfect Italian, “i nostri sogni sono sempre presenti” ("our dreams are always present").

On their following album, “Tyranny >For You<” from 1991, Front 242 delved even deeper into rave territory, ploughing through trance and new beat terrain and reaping what they had sown throughout the Eighties. “Front By Front”, however, remains their masterpiece, a frontier album at the dawn of a kind of cyber(post)punk that recalls William S. Burroughs' cut-up experiments, transposed into music fit for bombed-out dancehalls.

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07/10/2018