# 3,455
Front Line Assembly: Millennium (1994)
Nineties industrial music got some good pair of boots and started giving harder, swifter kicks up everyone’s asses. Godflesh, Nine Inch Nails, and Ministry were the best early examples to enlist guitars along with keyboards, drum machines, and other electronics to push their sounds to exciting new heights. Fans of Bill Leeb and Rhys Fulber’s Front Line Assembly will declare “Mindphaser” (1991) as their first call to action, but Millennium’s own acquisition of guitars mixed with their ever-evolving synth-work and its’ time of release helped their profile for their fans to land their favorite industrial album or point of entry. And what label was right for them to dive into the world of guitar-driven (seriously) industrial metal? Why, Roadrunner, of course. The title track is a token floor-crusher while its’ other single “Surface Patterns” hammers brutal with catchy rhythms. Want an early then-rare example of rap-rock before the “nu-metal” term co-opted it? Look towards “Victim Of A Criminal” with David ‘Che’ Hanson’s spit contributions parallel to Consolidated. Millennium is a oily chug-fest front front to back, but with Don Harrison and Devin Townsend’s donations with engineering by Greg Reely and Dave McKean artwork, the kids are more than satisfied and fed. Only when next year’s Hard Wired was released did Front Line Assembly truly double down and take off on their ferocity.
