Have you ever needed to listen to something completely divorced form what's been on your turntable recently? I've been focusing so much on metal and ambient the last few weeks that I needed something in a completely different genre to get me going today. Enter Front 242.
I picked this album up a long time ago, I can't even remember how many years its been. For the longest time I avoided this band. EBM has always been a hit and miss genre for me and for the most part I stayed away from Front 242 for whatever reason. When I finally decided to check them out I realized how much of a mistake I had made.
Tyranny (For You) is an album that both embraces the 80's and 90's EBM but also manages to sound way a head of its time. Much of the album's instrumentation has that unmistakable EBM percussion and melodies. That hard driving industrial type metal on metal beat combined with the highly synthetic melodies... if someone asked what EBM sounded like I would point them to this album as a primary reference point.
The vocals too have that semi spoken semi shouted quality to them that completely defined the genre. Where the band begins to differentiate themselves from the genre they helped create (or created depending on who you ask) is in the atmosphere on the album.
While the ablum is steeped in 80's instrumentation the atmosphere that the album produces sounds like something from the 90's to the mid 2000's for the electronic genre. It's incredibly dark and bleak, much more so than any of the other albums that came out around when Tyranny was released. While the nostalgia trip provided by the instruments is neat, it's the mood of the album that keeps me coming back.
This album is crazy good, probably my favorite from the band. It's a reminder to me that I don't listen to this style of music nearly enough, something I need to remedy.
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