Front 242 is a pioneering Belgian electronic body music group that came into prominence during the 1980s. During their most active period (they decided to quit ebm in 1993 with the albums 06:21:03:11 UP EVIL and 05:22:09:12 OFF) they were influential to many industrial and electronic artists, coining the term electronic body music (EBM) to describe their music.

Front 242 was created in 1981 in Aarschot, Belgium by Daniel Bressanutti and Dirk Bergen, who originally went by the name Prothese. They were interested in creating both music and graphic design using emerging electronic tools, and reportedly decided on changing their name to Front 242 because the name had greater potential as a subject of graphic design. The first single to be released was Principles, late in that year. Patrick Codenys and Jean-Luc De Meyer had separately formed a group called Under Viewer at about the same time. Codenys said his father received a lottery winning and shared enough of it with him so that he could buy a car, but he bought his first synthesizer instead. Contact between Bressanutti and Codenys led the two duos to join together in 1982. Bressanutti, Codenys and De Meyer all took turns on vocals at first, until they settled on De Meyer as the lead vocalist; only recently have early recordings with Bressanutti on vocals been widely released. De Meyer also came to write almost all of the lyrics. They also decided during this formative period never to use the regular waveform settings on their synthesizers, saying instead that creating the waveform itself for each note was part of the creative process.

Their next single, U-Men, would be released in 1982, followed by the band's first album Geography in 1983. These first releases, while cited as influential by a number of other artists in the genre, were not as characteristically strong and hard-hitting as the group's later efforts.

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