Being a fan of Front Line Assembly is akin to following your hometown baseball team for 15 or 20 years. You root for the guys, and you show up for all the games, but you're resigned to the fact that, not only are their best days behind them, but they probably weren't that great in the first place. Oh, but how they could entertain; when they stepped up to the plate -- when they out-hustled everyone else with a ferocious, clockwork intensity -- boy, they deserved the cheers and the accolades. Case in point: FLA's Caustic Grip and Tactical Neural Implant were two great albums within the pantheon of industrial dance music, despite their failure to really revolutionize the aggro-electronic scene. What they did do was epitomize it, taking the most accessible elements and churning out the perfect storm of choking baritone, catchy hooks and ultra-tight sequencing armageddon. Since that heyday, it becomes more apparent with each album that FLA has killed their golden goose; whether they're phoning it in or just out of compelling ideas, the last ten years of material just doesn't have that old skool, minty fresh magic. Another theory: the genre they're working in is simply out of gas.

Civilization isn't a terrible album. In fact, the disc does a great job of spotlighting the considerable talents of Bill Leeb and Rhys Fulber. Unfortunately, those talents tip the scale much more heavily at the mixing desk end of things, often leaving the song writing in a forgettable, by-the-numbers afterthought. I get similar feelings when listening to Delerium, another Leeb project that is arguably his most successful, commercially speaking. The production quality is invariably top notch, but slick doesn't always mean the best. The beats may be crisp and the sequencing perfectly strung together, but the soul is often sucked dry with premeditation and over-production. A track like "Maniacal" is classic, call-and-response FLA, with Leeb shouting anthems over a stomping, juggernaut rhythm section. It tries to get the blood boiling, but it winds up wedged firmly in the middle of the road. The title track, a melodic mid-tempo number, comes up with better results; it may be too fluffy for a hardcore gearhead, but the hooky chorus mixes in a pop sensibility that has always been a strength with FLA. "Dissident" travels into a more techno-ambient realm; here we see Delerium residue creeping into the mix for a castrated, relatively uninspired stroll in the park. The upbeat closer, "Parasite", tries to walk a fine line, recycling some of the band's best tricks -- aggressive percussion, sinister bass lines -- and mixing in some trancey elements that soften the edge into a nice, inoffensive strut. It's a fitting end to an album that, try as it might to etch itself into memory, ultimately fails to make much of an impression.