Core Members: Daniel B, Dirk Bergen, Patrick Codenys, Jean-Luc De Meyer.
Line-up Past/Present: Luc Van Acker, Tim Kroker, Jean-Marc Pauly, Pierre Pauly, Kristin Kowalski, Eran Westwood, John Dubs, Jean-Marc Lederman, Valerie Jane Steele, Sylvain Guigon.
Genre: Industrial, Electro, EBM.
Biography:
Front 242 were formed in 1981 in Aarschot, Belgium, by Daniel Bressanutti and Dirk Bergen, who wanted to create music and graphic design using emerging electronic tools. Prior to forming Front 242, Bressanutti worked on a music project called Prothese that had already produced several singles. The “Front” part of the name comes from the idea of an organized popular uprising and the fact that the word can be translated in many languages while retaining the same meaning. The number “242” was chosen because it’s “just sort of a design work”. The first single by the duo, “Principles”, was released in 1981.

At that time Patrick Codenys and Jean-Luc De Meyer had their own group called, Underviewer. After meeting Bressanutti and Bergen in 1982, they passed few Underviewer demo tapes to Bressanutti to check out. He was so impressed by the material that he asked Patrick and Jean-Luc to join Front 242 shortly after.

Recordings by the band were initially created in Daniel’s apartment studio, where all the entire band and their equipment were packed into a tiny 2.5m x 2.5m room. Bressanutti, Codenys, and De Meyer all took turns on the vocals track until finally settling on De Meyer as the lead vocalist, who was already writing most of the lyrics anyway.

In 1983, the band brought on Richard 23 onboard to replace Dirk Bergen, who had move on to pursue a graphic design career. Soon Front 242 rose in the charts and in popular in Belgium. They were particularly for their “infamous” live performances that involved loud sound, aggressive stage presence, smoke, and bright flashing lights. Image-wise, the band sought to project a more anonymous, mysterious image, replete with dark sunglasses and militaristic uniforms so that they could not be easily identified. Bressanutti took this anonymity to the extreme, leaving stage entirely to run live shows from the sound board behind the audience.

The music press was less receptive, sometimes interpreting their militaristic appearance, dark music, and samples from war movies – especially given the backdrop of the Cold War and terror incidents in Belgium – as being pro-fascist, an interpretation that the band firmly rejected.

The band’s second album, No Comment, was released in 1984 and was the first to introduce the term electronic body music into the popular lexicon. The album’s liner notes stated: “Electronic body music composed and produced on eight tracks by Front 242.” It was also the first time the band would collaborate with Luc van Acker (Revco, BiGod-20). Later that same year Front 242 signed with the legendary Wax Trax! Records in the United States. At the behest of Al Jourgensen, Front 242 was invited to accompany his band Ministry on their 84 US tour. This tour led to the creation of Revolting Cocks by Richard 23, Luc van Acker, and Alan Jourgensen.

In 1991 the band release the groundbreaking Tyranny [For You] album, which became the band’s highest charting LP, reaching #95 on the Billboard 200. It was also the first Front 242 album to be released under contract with a major corporate label, Sony/Epic.

In 1992, Bressanutti returned to combining graphic arts with music, taking his lithographs on tour to three U.S. galleries. Bressanutti also composed a solo half-hour atmospheric recording called Art and Strategy (or The Art Corporation) to play during viewings of the lithographs, and released it in a limited edition of 1,000 CDs.

Front 242’s style shifted abruptly with each of their next two albums, released in rapid succession in 1993 on Epic’s sub-label RRE (originally planned as a double-CD): 06:21:03:11 UP EVIL and 05:22:09:12 OFF (the numbers correspond to letters, spelling “FUCK UP EVIL” and “EVIL OFF”). The band describes the two albums as “based on the duality of good and evil.”[5] However, strains were emerging, with the band members apparently having different artistic views. Despite these tensions, they performed on the main stage of the 1993 Lollapalooza tour.

Neither of these albums had significant input from Richard 23, and 05:22:09:12 OFF only included their lead vocalist, Jean-Luc De Meyer, on a remixed track originally from Up Evil. On the other hand, a variety of new contributors were listed as members of Front 242 on these albums: Jean-Marc Pauly and Pierre Pauly (of the Belgian electronic group Parade Ground) on Up Evil, and 99 Kowalski, Jon Dubs and Eran Westwood on Off.

99 Kowalski is the stage name of Kristin Kowalski, making a tradition out of Richard 23’s idea of number-as-name. Kowalski, Dubs and Westwood were originally members of a New York City band called Spill who Bressanutti and Codenys had brought to Belgium to produce their debut album. After the recording sessions fell apart, they contributed to Front 242 on the Off release.

After the release of 06:21:03:11 Up Evil and 05:22:09:12 Off, there was no new material from Front 242 under any lineup. Instead, the band released a stream of live recordings and remixes. However, this period also saw a proliferation of side projects, an inordinate number of which involved De Meyer.

Earlier, Richard 23 played in the Revolting Cocks, and De Meyer had a side project doing vocals for Bigod 20 for their single, “The Bog” in 1990. In 1995, De Meyer met Marc Heal of Cubanate at a Front Line Assembly concert, and the two of them collaborated along with Ged Denton and Jonathan Sharp, to record as Cyber-Tec Project for the new (and short-lived) Cyber-Tec record label.

After the departure of Sharp and the demise of the Cyber-Tec label, the remaining group continued working under the name C-Tec. De Meyer also took over as vocalist for Birmingham 6 for their 1996 album Error of Judgment. 1996 also saw the debut album Elemental from Cobalt 60, which De Meyer formed with Dominique Lallement and Frederic Sebastien of Reims, France, members of Kriegbereit. This was the start of a number of releases from Cobalt 60, which also did the soundtrack for the video game Wing Commander V. Meanwhile, Richard 23 recorded with the groups Holy Gang, and later, LaTchak.

The four core members of Front 242 regrouped in 1998 to compose radically reworked versions of many of their songs, which they then performed on their first tour in five years, appropriately called the Re:Boot tour. They acknowledged the influence of The Prodigy and their Fat of the Land album in crafting the new, more techno style of Re:Boot.

Albums:
• Geography (1982)
• No Comment (1984)
• Official Version (1987)
• Front by Front (1988)
• Tyranny (For You) (1991)
• 06:21:03:11 Up Evil (1993)
• 05:22:09:12 Off (1993)
• Pulse (2003)

EPs:
• Endless Riddance (1983)
• Two in One (1983)
• Live in Chicago (1984)
• Politics of Pressure (1985)
• Interception (1986)
• Never Stop (1989)
• Tragedy >For You< (1990)
• Rhythm of Time (1991)
• Gripped by Fear (1991)
• Mixed by Fear (1991)
• Angels Versus Animals (1993)
• Religion (1993)
• Animal (1993)
• Headhunter 2000 (1998)
• Still & Raw (2003)

LINKS:
Homepage: front242.com/
Bandcamp: front242.bandcamp.com/