FRONTLINE ASSEMBLY – Civilization

To be honest: this album is just disappointing. Really. Can’t say it in any other way.
FRONTLINE ASSEMBLY already had a turnaround musical wise in the mid 90’s, many people could not comprehend, seeing the duo Leeb/Fulber labeled commercial. In 1995 Rhys Fulber left the band and started his own career as successful producer (and almost fifth band member of Fear Factory), taking many credits for his work, while Bill Leeb went on with Chris Peterson and FLA. But they could not hold their ground and just went under in the masses of average releases. A little more success he had with Delerium, one of his numberless side projects (its sound was assimilated by FLA at the end). But here too he got surpassed by Fulber with his project Conjure One that pursues same musical direction but is not that commercial and poppy like latest Delerium releases (from Poem on). For any reasons Leeb and Fulber got together again and first released a new Delerium album, starting work for a new FLA album afterwards.
Now they come out with Civilization, a blend of poppy Delerium offsets and I-don’t-know-what-I-want Electro sounds, its only goal seems to be to let the cashbox ring.
To make it clear: it’s not about to pull someone’s work to pieces just because I can’t or don’t want to comprehend or I don’t like the band’s “musical development”. Because there is no musical development at all! On Civilization one will find well known bass-driven beats FLA already utilized in the 90’s, just rehashed, in-between Delerium sequences and all together jazzed up with catchy Future Pop stuff. Merely songs like Maniacal (first single) and in parts, Vanished and Dissident let gleam thru the old spirit of FRONTLINE ASSEMBLY and give some spherical melodies and interesting EBM/Industrial lines to the listener. But they only approach for a short moment. It’s even not enough for one great song. It all still sounds like FLA, but it’s nothing to what one have already listened to on earlier releases.
It’s too bad… really…