I saw Front Line Assembly for the first time at BB Kings, May 3rd.
Acumen Nation and The Start, opened.
FLA’s playlist was fantastic since they were set up like a band (drums/guitars riffs) which is my favorate style for them. There’s nothing worse than watching an industrial one-man-band sit in front of a laptop while hopping and down trying to get the crowd into it.
Bill Leeb was in a sarcastic mood. He apolagized for the tour-bus-incident last time he tried to come to NY. The smoke machine ran out of fluid, so he suggested we all fart to keep the mist alive. He also voiced his aggrevation at the lack of any PA system so he couldn’t tell how they sounded, but it wasn’t that bad.
Although I didn’t recognize the other band members, I overheard someone point to Chris Peterson and someone else said Rhys Fulber wasn’t there. I can’t confirm any of this.
After performing, they came back for an oncore including Mindphaser that was phenomenal.
After the show we ate at Lucille’s restaurant, located in the same building. When we were done, we went outside to get a cab and found Bill Leeb (my idol) was just hanging out on the curb while they were loading the tour bus. He was practically alone! It figures I went through two batteries on my camera to get 1.5 gig of pictures and videos. (requests?). Even my cell phone was dead after searching for a signal in the underground club for 4 hours.
So I ended up just gawking at him like a teenager, think of nothing better to say than “duh…, I like music!” as he finished up outside and hopped on the bus.

Next time I will be better prepared.