July 26, 1999

Title Of Record

These are the dark days. Metal and goth are on an inexorable rise, and [a]Marilyn Manson[/a] stalks the minds of the moral majority like a bare-arsed bogeyman....

5 / 10 These are the dark days. Metal and goth are on an inexorable rise, and Marilyn Manson stalks the minds of the moral majority like a bare-arsed bogeyman. For Richard Patrick, Filter's vocalist and guitarist, and one-time member of grunting industrial-rock pigs Nine Inch Nails, it should be the perfect time.

/img/Filter899.jpg with a casual menace, and the songs are fleshed out with the clanking electro-goth beats currently hot with everyone from Limp Bizkit to Korn. Innovative it isn't, but it rocks.

Problem is, it only does so sporadically. For example, 'The Best Things' features an apocalyptic meltdown that sounds like the Devil has decided to gargle with your stereo. But the next song is the jangling 'Take A Picture', so bland it could be by anyone from 'Rattle And Hum'-era U2 to Crowded House. Disappointingly, it's this soft rock, accompanied by some sub-Smashing Pumpkins angst, that gradually takes over.

Outwardly radical, yet inwardly deeply conservative, Filter still occasionally show a healthy disregard for the workings of the inner ear. But, as Manson and his acolytes make mainstream rock evermore extreme, Richard Patrick has taken a fatally dull wrong turning.