(Translated from my original Italian text by ChatGPT and Piero Scaruffi)

Daniel "Prothese" Bressanutti, Patrick Codenys, and Jean-Luc DeMeyer created with Front 242 a genre of dance industrial music that spread through the nightclubs at the end of the '80s. Although somewhat aged, Front By Front remains their classic, a classic of European body music and one of the most imitated albums of the '90s.

The career of Front 242 began in 1981 in Belgium with the singles Principles/ Body To Body (New Dance) and U Men.

The first album, Geography (RRE, 1982), was entirely dedicated to an industrial music that directly descended from the most depressed disco music: fatalistic ballads for electronics and vocals (Operating Tracks), soundtracks of machines (Black White Blue), robotic dances (Art And Strategy), apocalyptic poems (Kampfbereit), mimicking Suicide in GVDT, and experimenting with some "creative" noise in Least Inkling. These mawkish and monotonous tracks expressed a sense of fear and desolation reminiscent of B-grade science fiction films. Emaciated post-nuclear dandies, as if Ultravox had been slowed down and "drained" of punk energy, Front 242 represented the remnants of "disco" civilization more than the precursors of industrial music. In short, they were like Kraftwerk and Depeche Mode without particular genius; but the formula was right: modernity (electronic) within tradition (melodic).

After losing Dirk Bergen, the following year Daniel Bressanutti (alias Daniel Prothese, the main composer), keyboardist Patrick Codenys, vocalist Jean-Luc DeMeyer, and the newcomer Richard 23 (percussion and vocals) began a music-political campaign, presenting themselves as an avant-garde audio-visual ensemble. In fact, the 12" of Endless Riddance (Wax Trax), with Take One, the EP No Comment (Wax Trax, 1984), with the monumental Commando Mix and the single No Shuffle, and the 12" Politics Of Pressure, with Don't Crash, and Interception, with the funky ballad Quite Unusual and the stormy piece Aggressiva, tried to sell their limited musical talents to as wide an audience as possible.

Richard 23, Al Jourgensen of Ministry, and Luc Van Acker also formed the Revolting Cocks.

Front 242 were very skilled in exploiting the genre's boom, when in 1987 they released Official Version (Wax Trax, 1987), which was destined to become a best-seller in the dance music scene of the end of the decade. Opening with the polyrhythmic trance of the instrumental W.Y.H.I.W.Y.G, in a triumph of side effects, and dominated by the overwhelming hedonism of Masterhit, the album is actually much less imaginative and effective than the first, but the tracks are more complete (or simply longer, easier to dance to); it is also less melodic, but the melodies are sung in the winning register and immersed in the right blend of rhythms.

Front By Front (Was Trax, 1988), preceded and enhanced by the macabre nightclub hit Headhunter, further progressed in the direction of the sales charts, always under the pretext of experimentation and militancy. The production quality had reached its peak, sensationalism overflowed in the emphatic and hypnotic Until Death and the tribal and sinister Im Rhythmus Bleiben. It was a rhythmic apotheosis that brushed up against hip-hop in First In/ First Out.

Front 242 are now a perfect machine for electronic dance vibrations. The 12" singles Never Stop and Tragedy, frantic and seductive, consecrate the formula, presenting countless mixes of the same melody.

Tyranny For You (Epic, 1991) thus became one of the albums that marked the recognition of industrial music by the "mainstream", by the music industry establishment. The quartet accentuates melodramatic tones by using symphonic arrangements (Sacrifice), more pronounced rhythms (Rhythm Of Time), filters and samples (Moldavia), funereal atmospheres (Gripped By Fear), and occult rituals (Soul Manager, the best-scripted pastiche). Austere and detached, Tyranny announces their achieved maturity.

This phase ends with This World Must Be Destroyed, on Mixed By Fear (Red Rhino).

After losing Richard 23 and adding two new members, Front 242 definitively reinvented themselves with two twin albums, first 06:21:03:11 Up Evil (Epic, 1993), a commercial work that, having abandoned the dogma of pure electronics, does not hesitate to follow Ministry down the path of industrial hard rock (Religion), and then its alter ego, 05:22:09:12 Off (Play It Again Sam, 1993), where they instead indulge in experimental libidos (gothic/ambient in Animal, house/cosmic in Genecide, techno/operatic in Modern Angel).

Richard 23 began his solo career in 1995 with a rap/metal single. DeMeyer recorded the EP Cybertec (Fifth Column, 1995) with Jonathan Sharp, whose track Let Your Body Die is the manifesto of a project in which he seems to want to explore the sound of the latest Front 242 (which he himself defined as "deep industrial"). In fact, the subsequent Darker (Wax Trax, 1998), a collaboration this time with Marc Heal of Cubanate and keyboardist Ged Denton, would be much less industrial and more atmospheric (Stateless).

Speculating on the allure of terror, Front 242 recycled all the genre's clichés to the point of exhaustion. Compared to their latest works, Geography was a masterpiece. Inventors of the cerebral, gloomy, cold, impersonal, pretentious "electronic body music" that would dominate the decade's transition, they are the epitome of all its merits (few) and all its flaws (many).

Mut@ge.Mix @ge (PIAS/Never, 1998) is a remix album. Live Code (Play It Again Sam, 1998) is a live album. Re:Boot (Metropolis, 1999) revisits their classics in a trance version.