Front Line Assembly – Wake Up The Coma

For me also one of my favourite FLA albums, especially for the Nick Holmes vocals on the title track. From start till finish excellent songwriting and production. Gets better the more you play it. There's some of the most bad ass industrial ever created on this album! What a sound through my system! Only Amadeus took some getting used to, but now I love it.

This album is a bass stress test for your speakers. Mastered for dynamics and bass. Yet - IMHO - my top three of FLA works. Great music quality and even better press (vinyl).

FLA are masters of synth programming and usually hit the mark when it comes to post apocalyptic atmospheres. Right out of the box Eye On You hits really hard. There are numerous tracks that stay true to the cyber punk aggression of their early years. Hatevol screams about love and pain, but there were some...missteps. Who the f*ck thought it was a good idea to cover Rock Me Amadaeus? The cheese was already built in back in the 80's. Is there any fan that would feel comfortable bumping this track in their ride? A lot of the tracks plod along and are so minimal (if a thing can be said about FLA) that it's hard to become invested in them. The power is there, and the distorted vocals of course, but what else ya got? Why should I care? The title track had some interesting changes and a decent chorus while Mesmerized was FLA at it's groovy. dark best.

Living a Lie with the embarrassing lyric "I'm making love to an alien" amd "Fuck an alien and you'll be free" is just ridiculous on its face. The final track Spitting Wind was the rancid icing on the cake. It sounds terrible and was a chore to get through.

I'm a fan and always will be. But let's be honest this album was disappointing and far from their best work. When they're at their best I'm fully engaged. The synths and the programming and yes even the melodies have me anticipating where they are going to take things. Take that away and you've got some depressed guys screaming that the world sucks with a lot of expensive equipment.

Thirty years ago FLA were one of my faves, but never an all-time one. I rarely listen to them these days, and haven't for over a decade now. Yet I decided to finally plunk down some cash for new output. And what did I get? A pleasant album, which oddly covers Falco (but not in a disastrous way or anything). Thirty years is a long time, and with dozens of albums and projects, Bill Leeb and co. have made more of the same: it's worth hearing a few times, but won't likely stick in one's mind the way all the older classics likely have.

Bought a sealed copy, came with tremendous amount of surface noise. Had to return to seller. I wonder if this is just my luck hitting defected copy, or this is overall really bad press by Metropolis... I will try to buy directly from Metropolis, and figure this out.

Pretty good album but man that cover of Rock Me Amadeus is just stupid

On the contrary, it's a fresh sounding, solid FLA album. Ignore Amadeus and the ultra cheesy Living a Lie and you get a very enjoyable album, atmospheric, but kinda minimalistic and straight to the point.