Bill Leeb
Model Kollapse
Metropolis Records

Bill Leeb’s creative output has always been defined by collaboration, both in his main outlets Frontline Assembly and Delirium, as well as his countless side-projects. The announcement of the electro-industrial maven’s first LP under his own name naturally led to a lot of questions, namely whether it would be a proper solo LP with Leeb handling the lion’s share of the writing and production, or whether it would be in partnership with new or existing creative foils.

Model Kollapse is very much the latter, with the album being credited to Leeb and the production duo of Dream Bullet, one half of which is longtime FLA contributor and former live guitarist Jared Slingerland, plus some additional contributions from Rhys Fulber (Leeb’s current and most consistent counterpart) and Jason Corbett and Shannon Hemmett of ACTORS and LEATHERS. Additionally the mix and the master come courtesy of Greg Reely, whose technical contributions to the Front Line discography are no doubt responsible for large amount of its character and continuity.

With that established, the next natural question is what sets this record apart from FLA, or Noise Unit, or any of the other releases Leeb has put out in recent years. The answer isn’t especially clear from multiple listens. It has the same sleek ultra-modern sound as all of his contemporary albums, and the songwriting and vocal performance don’t deviate from what you would expect from him in 2024. If there was some specific idea or principle guiding the record’s construction from an identity standpoint, its not easy to pinpoint. In a recent interview Leeb stated that the record was largely conceived as he was working on the material for the Cyberaktif comeback, and while basking in the positivity of his tour with Ministry and Gary Numan, factors that suggest some desire to make music for his own satisfaction more than to reinvent his sound or push its boundaries.

And really that’s what you get: if you’ve heard Mechanical Soul or Deviator, you’ve basically heard most of what this record has to offer. That’s not a bad thing, those records have their adherents, but it is notable in that Leeb’s career has largely been one of reinvention and trying different musical styles on for size. The Initial Command and Millenium and Airmech are all significantly different versions of Front Line Assembly, just as those early ambient Delirium records bear little resemblance to the crossover worldbeat successes that were Semantic Spaces and Karma. Even if you hate his records that were drawing from the sounds of the day like FLAvour of the Weak or Echogenetic, you couldn’t fault him for just doing the same thing over and over. So it feels a little weird to realize that in 2024 he seems to have settled into a distinctive but samey post-EDM version of electro-industrial – the specifics vary here and there, but the overall design, the songs and the feel don’t. Model Kollapse is very well made from a technical standpoint, but it has nothing new to offer, no identity of its own. You could reasonably argue that Leeb doing Leeb is actually what you should expect from a record under his own name, but when it seems like that’s what he’s been doing in his other projects anyway, it renders the point kind of moot.

That said, it’s not a record devoid of intriguing elements by any means. Opener “Demons” uses some clever push-pull in the drum programming to underline its fast-moving bassline, a trick that also appears on “Pinned Down”, where it gives dimension to its chunky use of guitars and melodramatic breakdowns. There’s also the use of Shannon Hemmett as a vocalist on both “Terror Forms” and “Muted Obsession”, mirroring and contrasting Leeb’s robotic delivery on the former and providing some melody on the latter, a song that is one good hook away from being a really good, settling instead for pleasant. That latter issue is endemic to the record as a whole; you can find plenty of substance in its production and programming, but none of the songs have much to hang your hat on beyond the basics, one a bit faster, one slower, one heavier, one more textural.

That may or may not be an issue for the average listener; on our commentary podcast for Front Line Assembly’s classic LP Tactical Neural Implant we opined that most of Bill Leeb’s output is more about style then it is about songs in the classic sense. Whether or not you agree with that assessment, Model Kollapse does at least feel of a piece with other recent Leeb records in terms of the quality of its construction. In some ways that does make it very much a perfect example of the great maestro of electro-industrial’s modern work; whatever the project, and whoever is along for the ride, it sounds like Bill Leeb. Your enjoyment of the record will hinge on your interest in his very specific, very characteristic take on electronic industrial music.

Buy it.