Front Line Assembly
FLAvour of the Weak

Released the same year as the celebrated and overrated "The fat of the land" by Prodigy, focused on the same electronic tracks, but with the atout of a longer and more solid artistic evolution behind, this beautiful album by the Canadians Front Line Assembly is generally considered a filler work, an obligatory chapter - therefore less weighty - of their discography. In fact, Bill Leeb's band has always remained anchored to very specific musical currents, characterizing more the style of a generation than their own style. Groups like Prodigy owe a debt to them, as they brought the techno-industrial sound to the masses when names like Skinny Puppy and FLA (precisely) had already consolidated the genre's standards.

"Flavour of the weak" has nothing to envy from the most considered works of the band (for example, Implode or Tactical Neural Implant) and perfects the thunderous repertoire of cybernetic electronics that is somewhat their trademark. Set in atmospheres that ooze sci-fi environments and biomechanical suggestions, the album declares right from the cover its iconographic and conceptual vocation, aiming at the palate of the devotees. Technically impeccable production, it struggles to find its immediate dimension due to the extended development of the tracks, which certainly could not aspire to be as radio-friendly as those of Prodigy; but the broad scope of songs like "Corruption" or "Evil Playground" has a fine-grained compositional depth, indulgent as it may be in the use of analog and digital sounds (as well as sampling) constantly aimed at impressing.

The long instrumental "Corruption" that opens the tracklist sails toward intergalactic shores laden with nostalgic scents and bursts of alien aggression, weaving pleasant keyboard carpets in minor tones. And following are the basslines of "Sado-Masochist" and "Autoerotic", which if in title find a banal correspondence with the most hackneyed sexuality, in musicality create hypnotic neural patterns of great impact. And as the listening continues, the inevitable comparison with the new exponents of electronic sound emerges, never satisfied from impressing with bad and polemical attitudes, but certainly built artfully to exploit a specific cultural moment. Something that FLA has essentially always snubbed, given their distant roots.

I struggle to grant a full score because in the entire discography it's difficult to pinpoint the true masterpiece. But despite some detractors who - as I said at the beginning - turned up their noses, "Flavour of the weak" is a good album and doesn't leave a bitter taste for those seeking avalanches of synthesizers and varied cyberpunk frescoes.