Bill Leeb, Model Kollapse

I don’t need to start with an explanation of what Model Kollapse is. Music from Bill Leeb, most known for Front Line Assembly. (You already knew that.)

Some of my fav FLA works are Echogenetic with its Dubstep structures, and Improvised Electronic Device (heavy industrial-pop).

Model Kollapse doesn’t sound like those. For some reason my mind kept going to Skinny Puppy. Explaining why that is exactly, is difficult for me. Similar energy.

A first impression of what Model Kollapse would be like was the single called ‘Terror Forms’ feat Shannon Hemmett. She is indicator.

Her main projects, LEATHERS and ACTORS, are synth bands that knowingly recreate a 1980s sound. Dreamy and intoxicating. Bubbly, floating.

One LEATHERS’ music video creates a headspace: mesmerizing, glamourous, under the influence. Lyrics conjure a retro scene: Cherry Coke, DVD, a switchblade knife. Hemmett herself appears in a neon-lit area with oversize balloons.

Dating back 38 years to The Initial Command, FLA’s world consists of aggressive rhythms with cyberpunk and war themes. A sharp contrast.

(Back to Skinny Puppy.)

Near its formation in the 80s, Leeb was part of the industrial group Skinny Puppy. A few years later, they parted (I believe) due to creative differences. Leeb formed FLA.

FLA and Skinny Puppy had two different trajectories with a common origin. FLA sounded faster and more technical, EDM-based. It laid the foundation for a later emergent music genre called Aggrotech. (And had Leeb’s cyber-war lyrics.)

Skinny Puppy is slower, more spooky. Strange in a way unique to 80s music , like a darker side of dreaminess. Multi-textured and random in production by cEvin Key. Personified vocally and thematically in frontperson Nivek Ogre. Morbid, playful, creepy. Ogre’s own most recent (as Ohgr) is called Tricks.

To me both Skinny Puppy and Ohgr (like in Tricks) always tried for something they never quite got right. In fleeting moments, they attained that nebulous thing, an itch was scratched. And this was part of the effect. Why I yearn for it. Broken, disjointed music. Overtly bad at times and telling of a modern pain and sorrow in a bizarre and broken language. Uninhibited, unafraid. (This is grown up stuff, what I emotionally connect with.)

(Back to 2024 now.) 

Today if I want to hear aggressive and technical, there are other choices besides FLA. For unpolished and awkward emotion of Skinny Puppy, there isn’t an approximation or replacement.

With Model Kollapse, Leeb actually goes to the Skinny Puppy world.

One track is called ‘Exotic Matter.’ In it, Leeb somehow pays tribute to an 80s Duran Duran anthem ‘Electric Barbarella.’ A similar concept with cheery synth interludes. He enunciates “Latex Lover” like “Bar-ba-rella.” (It just sounds like it.)

Only someone originating from Skinny Puppy would conceptualize something like that and make it work.

I have ‘Infernum’ from Model Kollapse playing as I type. At a few points Leeb’s voice goes very low and changes pitch. (Reminiscent of Ogre vocals.) One called ‘Folded Hands’ has a sampled recording, a little throwback to the first less defined FLA tracks like ‘Mindphaser.’

Places the album takes you are diverse and unique. Not the norm for Front Line Assembly. Closer to early FLA or Skinny Puppy, but not exactly either. Production mostly is his own take on electro and EBM rhythms. It has that uneasy, experimental and wounded aura of Skinny Puppy — which wasn’t my expectation, but what I really wanted.

It gave me what I wanted.

Throughout, Leeb’s vocals are nuanced and fluid. Audiophiles will appreciate the layered production and sound design. Very current technique.

On a second listen, I caught another 80s reference. In both ‘Muted Obsession’ and ‘Stimulate,’ Leeb says “All I ever wanted was to be with you.” Could be a nod to eponymous song by The Human League. (Same 80s dreamworld.)

There must be other 80s tie-ins—intended or otherwise—that I just haven’t picked up on. They are clues. In Model Kollapse, Leeb reclaims the spirit of the early days.