Alfa Matrix is releasing a solid silver double-vinyl edition of Front 242’s farewell live album “Black Out” on 25 September 2026. The crystal clear and clear purple (fanpack) vinyl runs that came before have both sold out, and a Full Silver Pack bundle appears alongside the new 2LP.
The solid silver 2LP is available now on the Alfa Matrix store for 37.99 euro, with the Full Silver Pack listed alongside it, and the album can be heard in full on Bandcamp.
The silver pressing and the Full Silver Pack
After the earlier vinyl editions sold out before release, Alfa Matrix had another 1,000 copies cut on solid silver vinyl; the label calls the demand “nothing short of phenomenal”. The silver 2LP spreads 20 tracks over four sides.
The Full Silver Pack combines that 2LP with the 2CD digipak edition of the album, the 2CD tribute “Recovery For You 2” and a pair of samplers from the label, “Sounds From The Matrix 26” and “Sounds From The Matrix 27”.
A farewell recorded in Brussels
“Black Out” captures the band’s last tour. It was taped in January 2025 at Brussels’ AB (Ancienne Belgique), where the group played its final home-town dates, and first appeared in June 2026. The material comes from a six-month farewell tour of Europe and the USA that comprised over 40 performances. Three songs that had featured in recent concerts — “Generator”, “Fix It” and “Hide and Seek” — receive their first official release here.
The recording lineup had Patrick Codenys, Jean-Luc De Meyer and Richard 23, plus Tim Kroker on drums, while David Baboulis of SOLDOUT handled studio mixing and production. The 2CD digipak stretches the running order to 23 tracks with the exclusives “MasterHit”, “Soul Manager” and “No Shuffle”. When announcing the final tour, the band said that stopping while still “vibrant and full of energy” is how it wished to be remembered.
‘Black Out’ vinyl tracklist
- “W.Y.H.I.W.Y.G.”
- “Moldavia”
- “Body to Body”
- “Don’t Crash”
- “Operating Tracks”
- “U-Men”
- “Funkhadafi”
- “Quite Unusual”
- “Generator”
- “Commando Mix”
- “Gripped by Fear”
- “Take One”
- “Red Team”
- “Fix It”
- “Punish your Machine”
- “Tragedy for You”
- “Hide and Seek”
- “Welcome to Paradise”
- “Happiness”
- “HeadHunter”
About Front 242
Front 242 began in Belgium in 1981 with Daniel Bressanutti and Dirk Bergen as founders. Patrick Codenys and Jean-Luc De Meyer came aboard shortly afterwards, and in 1982 Richard 23 became the fourth member of the classic lineup. The band is counted among the forerunners of electronic body music, a label it applied to itself on the 1984 album “No Comment”.
Its albums run from “Geography” (1982) to “Pulse” (2003), taking in “Official Version” (1987), “Front by Front” (1988) — the record that holds “Headhunter” — and “Tyranny (For You)” (1991), as well as the 1993 pair “06:21:03:11 Up Evil” and “05:22:09:12 Off”. Daniel Bressanutti no longer toured with the band from 2018, and its last concerts took place at the Brussels venue AB in January 2025. “Black Out” is the document of those shows, with the silver 2LP and Full Silver Pack as the latest ways to own it. More from the label can be heard on the Alfa Matrix Bandcamp.