When I was ten or eleven, at the end of the 1980s, we got satellite TV. Partly this was to allow my father, raised in part in Germany on a British Armed Forces base and a fluent German speaker, to watch German channels (and most importantly his beloved Borussia Dortmund). But it also had a side benefit: we had MTV Europe.

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One of my stepbrothers was a few years older, so just the right age to start discovering their own music taste, and it wasn’t long before me and my other stepbrother (who was a few months older than me) were doing similarly, and 120 Minutes on a Sunday night swiftly became required watching.

Two songs on that changed the course of my life, and are in many ways the root of what I do now. One was Epic by Faith No More, the other was Headhunter by Front 242. Both were probably helped by having striking videos. But the stark, black-and-white, Anton Corbijn-shot video for Headhunter was like nothing I’d ever seen before. Then again, I’d never heard anything like it, either. That predatory bassline, the fierce kick-drums, the twin vocalists, that mighty chorus.

It took some time, but that led to an interest in other industrial music across the next decade and beyond, and by the time I was at Uni in London in 1996, I was already going to Full Tilt and Slimelight, and within a week of starting my Uni course, I was already covering gigs for the student newspaper. Front 242, then, have a lot to answer for.

The thing is, by the time I’d gone to Uni, 242 were already something of an inactive band. The twin albums 06:21:03:11 Up Evil and 05:22:09:12 Off in 1993 were their last for a decade, and they only resumed playing live again around 1998, which saw the release of the scorching Re:Boot Live – the best of their live albums by a country mile, and one that saw them retooling and powering up a number of their songs in new ways, some versions of which broadly remained until the end. One track from it, though – the opening rip through one of the many versions Happiness/Modern Angel (originally on 05:22:09:12 Off) turned into an unexpected industrial club hit in the UK, and you will still hear it in some sets to this day.

It took me even longer to first see them live. Like many bands, I can thank Infest for my first time, and when they did play in 2008, I was offered a DJ slot – which turned out to be straight after their set! – and got to interview Patrick Codenys for one of the first interviews I ever did on this site.

As became a pattern, the sheer energy of 242 live shows was a shock from the off. Their use of mostly live percussion added an almighty kick to their sound, and their willingness to tweak and retool even old favourites for maximum impact live made everything wallop you that much harder, not to mention the exquisite sound quality that they insisted on for every show.

Some statistics, as I’m that kind of nerd: between 2008 and early 2025, I saw them eleven times. Twice in London, once in Bradford, once in Glasgow. Once in Montreal, twice in Chicago, once in Antwerp, and three times in Brussels. Three times in a week (in three countries) in December 2011, and then all three of the final shows of all in Brussels. I saw the band perform 36 different songs over the years – one of which was Jean-Luc de Meyer doing an old Underviewer track, four of which are/were unreleased, and just five were played at every show (Body to Body, Headhunter, Moldavia, Take One and Welcome to Paradise).

There are various scraps of memories from those shows. 2011: my first trip to Canada, and amid the exhausting five days of Festival Kinetik, 242 blew the roof off with a show that started at 0100 in the morning. Later the same year, my first trip to Antwerp, seeing them in the relatively small surrounds of TRIX, then later in the same week, making a 24-hour dash to Glasgow by train to hang with my late friend Paddy (of Je$us Loves Amerika), and having the privilege of seeing Paddy support his heroes with JLA playing as well as watching the intricate detail of a 242 soundcheck. My first trip to Chicago in 2014 – my first of five visits so far for Cold Waves Festival – closing out with 242 blowing everyone else off the stage again, and then back again in 2022 for what was, at the time, expected to be the last 242 show in Chicago. That was a hell of an emotional show – spending the set with a bunch of great Chicago-based friends and singing along to nearly everything – and for me saw the debut of two outstanding new songs (Generator and Fix It). And then the final UK show in December last year, where my abiding memory is of my wife losing it one last time to her favourite song (Welcome to Paradise), as well as seeing a whole bunch of friends I’ve not seen in ages.

The seed for going to Brussels for the last shows of all was planted after that Chicago show in 2022. I was talking to Kelly Novak, while doing shots at 0230 in the morning, and agreeing that we would see each other at the final show, whenever that happened.

Somehow, that actually worked out. But it nearly didn’t.

I had managed to get tickets for Friday in Brussels, and then Thursday when that was added, when they went onsale, but Saturday disappeared in a flash, and while it was disappointing, I kept saying to myself that at least I’d bagged two of them. But to allow a “just in case”, I booked my travel to allow a Sunday return. You never know, eh? A chance conversation with some people next to me while awaiting REIN to take the stage on Friday night – as we were admiring the couple who turned up in papier-mâché egg heads from the Headhunter video – revealed a spare ticket for Saturday night, and once a (fair – face value!) price was agreed, I nearly bit their hands off. Patrick, if you’re reading this, I can’t thank you enough for setting this in train.

There were other bands playing alongside 242 across the weekend, it is easy to forget. Daniel Myer (Haujobb, Architect, Liebknecht, DSTR, Covenant and various other things) took the stage on Thursday night for a fascinating set that was part PowerPoint slideshow, part career overview and Myer talking about his past. Highlights included a thundering Dead Market, and closing with a new track that saw Jean-Luc de Meyer join him onstage to perform.

The other two nights saw REIN support, and while I’ve already seen her a few times in recent years, the shorter, tighter set here on both nights was much better than the last few: less middling tracks, more bangers, and generally it just seemed that bit more focussed.

The problem for both Myer and REIN, though, was that no-one was really there for them: the perennial problem at an event show for this. But there was no doubt both upped their game for it.

But what they did was nothing to what 242 delivered across the three nights. Each night was a level above the previous, as they put everything – physically, musically, mentally – into delivering the shows of their lives before bowing out.

With Thursday being the hastily added, additional date, to meet the vast demand for tickets, you might have imagined that this would be something of a warm-up for what was to come, maybe them holding back something. Not. A. Chance.

From the pounding opener of W.Y.H.I.W.Y.G., it was all guns blazing, and an absolutely ripping Moldavia – complete with the Neurobashing refrains – that followed it felt like a perfect opening pair. Certainly, if you want a crowd buzzing and ready to go, you can’t get much better than that. The set then took us on something of a tour of the history of the band, stretching from their earliest material (the still wonderful U-Men), through mid-80s sample-based mayhem (the muscular rhythms of Funkadahfi), the upgraded but still familiar politics of Red Team (still worryingly relevant), and all the way through to still-unreleased tracks that I can’t be the only one hoping they get released someday. Particularly the rabble-rousing power of Fix It, an Underworld-meets-EBM styled monster that has become a fixture of the set in recent years.

I can’t have been the only one that felt somewhat wrung out after that first night.

Friday’s show continued a pattern that had become obvious – the first few tracks, and the last forty minutes of each set on the Black Out tour remained the same, but the band clearly had an interest in mixing up the middle of the set, bringing in some unexpected album tracks and rotating some favourites in-and-out each night.

That meant on the Friday some more downbeat tracks that at least gave us a breather. The surprisingly melodic, proto-EBM of Operating Tracks, for a start, but also the always welcome Quite Unusual, and the biggest surprise to me – an Underviewer track, Hide and Seek, that Jean-Luc did himself. The favour was returned to Richard 23 the track before, with a monstrous Punish Your Machine revving up the crowd once again. Although they were played each night, too, Don’t Crash and Take One were both hugely popular, too, the former pretty much unchanged from the original (fine by us), the latter nowadays with far more heft and kick, which has made the track an essential part of the band’s live show in their later years. Also, few songs have such a phenomenal synth hook, either.

Both of those nights were knocked into the shade – as good as they were – by the final night. There was a palpable buzz around the venue – and even in the queue to get in – with everyone there knowing the importance, but also the excitement of what was to come. There were thankyou banners unveiled, even dimming of the lights got a cheer – it was that kind of night.

So by the time a clearly emotional band took to the stage to tear into W.Y.H.I.W.Y.G. one more time, everything was nicely primed, and at points it felt like most of the crowd spent the show half-a-metre in the air, rather than on the ground. Every song hit harder, louder and heavier than any time I’ve ever seen them, and the judicious editing of some songs allowed more to be played in less time, and kept the pace up at somewhere beyond relentless. There wasn’t an unengaged person in the crowd, either thankfully, this wasn’t a show where most of the people were there just “to be there”. This was a crowd of genuine fans.

Happily, there was one of my favourite songs aired one last time (having not heard it on any of the other three shows I saw on the Black Out tour), as they flooded the venue with smoke and purple lasers for an absolutely pulverising Commando Mix. It was one of those moments I’ll never forget, pummelled by the sensory overload and hearing Richard 23 growling that “danger can come from everywhere“. It certainly can.

There were the obligatory thankyous, and speeches, before they unleashed absolute mayhem with just one two word phrase: “HEY POOR!“. Oh yes, the final Welcome to Paradise was an ecstatic rave-up, the band almost drowned out by the entire venue bellowing back every single word, and you could see Richard and Jean-Luc stealing the odd second to just stand and watch, grinning from ear to ear.

It’s just possible that it overshadowed the encore a tiny bit. Sure, the trance-like build and rave anthem Happiness (More Angels) is fantastic live, even if the version on this tour was truncated a little, but there was this nagging doubt that it was overshadowed by what came before.

That said, we came back round to where I started. Inevitably, it was Headhunter that brought the curtain down on Front 242 as a live entity – their signature song, probably the best known purely EBM/industrial song, the subject of countless remixes and a surprising number of covers in the thirty-seven years since it was released in 1988. Everyone into this kind of music knows the words, it still fills dancefloors. And thus, it was the appropriate end, and the band were once again assisted by two thousand other ecstatic voices in delivering that chorus.

As per the rest of the tour, the band took a curtain call to the sound of Work 242, a fast-paced set of images from across their history behind them as the band stood in shadow, and knowing that this really was the end, it felt difficult to watch in ways I find difficult to describe. The lights finally came up at – appropriately, and I cannot imagine it wasn’t by design – at 22:42.

This was my favourite industrial band putting a full stop on things. One I’ve travelled over 24,000 miles / 38,700 km to see over the past seventeen years or so, and I’ve enjoyed every second of it. I’ve made new friends, I’ve rekindled old friendships. I’ve seen new places, I’ve reacquainted with familiar cities. I’ve discovered new music and rediscovered music I’d perhaps forgotten.

Going to see live music is so much more than being a passive observer to me. It’s about the journey, the camaraderie, the visceral thrill of bring up and close to the music you love, with others feeling the same thing. And without Front 242, it’s possible that I may never have gone down this route in my life.

Front 242: thanks for everything. I felt so fucking alive.

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