Frontline Assembly* – State Of Mind

Are the tracks "sustain upright" and "resistance" available somewhere on vinyl ?

Seemingly a demo tape circa Nerve War released as LP over Dossier.*
This means that the sound of the master already is quite lo-fi.
The record itself has quite average sound quality.

Though in a way, everything mudding together with Bill Leeb shouting over metallic sounding echos of himself creates an unique atmosphere - the word claustrophobic comes to mind.

*Dossier allowed artists to get commercial LP and later CD releases of tapes they sent in.

Definitely a spartan, bleak electronic landscape which is atmospheric yet taut even if it doesn't match the musical quality of later albums. A great curio, really.

State of Mind has always been known as the black sheep of FLA's discography.
Constantly written off by reviewers and fans alike, the album has been called "rough", "unlistenable", "unfinished", and "too derivative".
The album is definitely rough. At times it is truly unfinished (note "Malignant Fracture"), but never once is it truly "unlistenable".
It is a dark album, perhaps the darkest of FLA's work, and certainly the most foreboding. Full of wide open soundscapes, creaking and crashing noise samples, bizarre, oft-unintelligible vocals, and echoing sound design. At times it sounds more like a soundtrack to a film that Bill Leeb intended to make. Or a film without the visuals.

While it is coarse, one must note that while not the first album released, this was mostly recorded BEFORE "The Initial Command", in 1987. Technically speaking, this is the true debut of FLA. Now, I cannot say it is my favorite release of theirs, it is truly a ton better than it is ed to be, and worth a few listenings.
Some of the tracks from "Total Terror II" were originally for this album. Note that "The Bonening" leads into "Testimony" almost perfectly, and how "Cro-Magnon" and "AEC Krunch" share the abrasive percussion, and even "Immobilized" sounds like a decent fit here.

Still the best album by this band, believe it or not. Caustic Grip, Implode and Artificial Soldier are really good, but not as good as this. Dark, cold, menacing and pure. Original EBM Industrial as it was meant to be.

I agree with much of Marks review.

If someone had listened to Millenium, Tactical Neural, Caustic Grip a zillion times then came and listened to this I guess I can see why it would alienate them. Honestly I didn't like the album to begin with years ago when I first heard it. But after playing it so much I realized its niche in my collection is that it makes if nothing else great background ambience, to chill out to at night or read a book to. Now I've come to a point where I pull it out with more frequency than I do Gashed Senses or whatnot.

But still, I like State Of Mind because its quite different from the later EBM heavy releases that followed it. While the programming is much more repetitive, perhaps a bit dated and lyrics sparser, it still very immersive and 'loud' while much other EBM from its time sounded very thin or MIDI. And like Marks said, Leeb was exploring different terrain with each early release he did. This can be seen if one compares this to the albums that bookend 'State Of Mind', those were more EBM styled. The terrain explored here seems to be...well, look no further than the title, a soundtrack to a 'state of mind.'

Even though it seems tracks like 'First Reprisal' or 'Consequence' go nowhere, Leeb builds sound upon sound with great dynamics to make an immersive, trance-like quality. The one track that could take the most beating might be 'Malignant Fracture' with its obvious out of sync drums. But heck I even enjoy that one, because again Leeb paints such a chaotic frenzy despite the limiting technology of the synths/programming. Hey you do get one dancy track at least...tell me you can't tap your foot to 'Landslide'?

Perhaps one of the many reasons this differs from the later stuff is that I don't think Leeb had begun to separate the Delerium atmospheres from the FLA style, so what we get is a mix of the two. Frankly, I see nothing wrong with this. 'Testimony' is deep, dark, beautiful ambience at its best (at least for the late 80's period). 'Terminal Power' is oppressive and exciting. 'Burnt Soul' is noisy, short and curiously entertaining. Much of this sound would later be funneled into the earlier Delerium releases (i.e. Faces, Forms & Morpehus).

Still I guess only those who enjoyed the old school industrial sound are going to like this album. If not, well throw in Hard Wired and forget about it. Or if you can take the time to delve a bit deeper and see what Leeb was driving at here, maybe you can come to like 'State of Mind'. Believe me, after a dozen listens or so all the early FLA stuff starts fleshing itself out and you realize all sorts of things going on in the background you never heard the first time.