I’d never taken LSD before. I was getting back from a trip home, the last time I’d see the family home before my folks sold it for good, entering into the pandemic’s first Fall season 2020 and I had some of my girlfriend’s acid in the fridge. She was gone too, fled back to her parents place after the pandemic cost her job. I always figured to do psychedelics you had to be in some pure headspace in the fucking forest or whatever. I decided for whatever reason, fuck it, I’m just gonna take it when I get back to Los Angeles. So I did. And I put on Filter’s Title of Record just as I felt it kicking in. I’ll never forget that feeling when “Welcome to the Fold” kicked in. I had only just started falling in love with the record so I’d heard it maybe a few times. That time though it was a physical force, I swear to you the force of that A-tuned guitar was pushing me backwards into bed, where I proceeded to lay flat out for the duration of the album.
When it was over I remember spending the come down listening to a live version of “Hey Man Nice Shot” and looking around my apartment coming to a serious realization, “This place is a fucking dump.” I was paying $1550 a month to live in a studio in the ugliest part of town this side of Skid Row. What am I doing here man!?
The moment felt significant enough I actually filmed it.
I got out. I made up my mind to move. I found the most incredible deal on a downtown one bedroom Los Angeles has ever seen and am still there. It’s by far the best apartment I’ve ever had. I really think Filter, okay and some chemicals I guess, are responsible for that. So here I am, I’m gonna try and explain to you why you gotta get these albums in your life too. Check it:
Short Bus [1995, Reprise]
“Hey Man Nice Shot” is the kind of hit that swallows a career. A battalion of amplifier buzz, an iconic downward hammer-on/pull-off riff, Richard Patrick’s electrifying howl and the heaviest bassline ever written in drop D it’s incredible to think Patrick pulled himself out from under this one the same way he pulled himself out of Nine Inch Nails. Alas, the rest of Short Bus does not escape its mighty shadow but as a collection of solid pop-minded industrial metal it never feels like it’s trying to either. “Under”s driving groove slinks enough to walk the catwalk too while “Stuck in Here” watches fan blades trace circles over an uninspired go-nowhere bedroom jam session. Short Bus was an acidic triumph for Patrick, a finger in the face of the former bandmate who told him if he wants more money deliver pizzas or write his own record. Patrick wrote the record. 27 years later that record would prove it deserved to stand on the same stage as anything the other guy wrote. B+
Title of Record [1999, Reprise]
Like the leap Radiohead made from Pablo Honey to The Bends, Filter lept from a debut with a big hit and a lot of promise to an album full of hits and a promise kept. Title of Record is the sound of a man hitting his stride at 30, a decade of booze and drugs behind him finding the means and desire for even more. A contemporary Spin Magazine interview finds the singer at home in his Chicago studio, wearing thousand dollar leather pants, stroking a cat and watching himself hit rock star poses in the yet to be released “Welcome to the Fold” video, claiming “I’m 30 and I look like I’m 26 because I refuse to grow up. I don’t see myself as a man. I see myself more like a fucked up 14-year old.” Title of Record triangulates this moment - of being 30, looking 26 and feeling 14 - by plumbing dizzying highs and brutal lows often at the same time. The album’s sparkling, shimmering awe-inspiring “Take a Picture” sounds like bliss while being about totally humiliating yourself on an airplane. The chorus request to “Take a picture cuz I won’t remember” is wistful, grab this moment for me because I feel great now and am gonna feel really bad in the morning. “Captain Bligh” is an epic drop-d beast, easily as big and overwhelming as “Hey Man Nice Shot”, with a goosebumps inducing chorus that happens to go “Iiiii am a guilty man / I can’t believe the things I’ve done to you.” Patrick finally crashes and burns on the wrenching “I’m Not the Only One,” written with a still bleeding fist from punching a wall (truly the ultimate in alcoholic adult tantrum behavior) and climaxes with a rending “Is this the last time I make love to you?” Yet, Title of Record is so epic, so overwhelming in its desert drive eternal Vegas fantasia, it’s impossible not to feel charged up while it’s on; when “The Best Things”’ drums kick in or “Miss Blue” prepares you for another burning finale but instead breaks down into the gentlest come down someone this hammered could hope for. For a moment, everything clicked. Then it fell apart. But for as long as Title of Record as on it’s one of the most riotous clicks you’ll ever hear. A
The Amalgamut [2002, Reprise]
The problem with being an alcoholic in your 30s is you remember. You remember what you did, your friends remember what you said, your body is keeping score (you’re losing) and all the electrolytes and cold showers in the world won’t save you now. When The Amalgamut was released in 2002 Patrick was spiraling, rescued only by a trip to rehab that canceled the tour and a furious Reprise, already hundreds of thousands of dollars deep into the project, yanked promo for the album. Opener “You Walk Away” is the sports car Patrick piloted in the “The Best Things” video redlining and spinning out of control. “My soul leaves, my soul breathes My heart aches, the ground shakes,” he nervously twitches while Steven Gillis’ drumming - exemplary throughout this album - pushes him faster and faster. The Amalgamut retains the industrial weight and alternative hookcraft of previous albums - “The Only Way Is the Wrong Way,” a triumphant emergence into sunlight after a breakthrough therapy session; “My Long Walk to Jail” vicious enough to earn a performance on Conan despite deep cut status - but unlike those albums The Amalgamut is a total mess. An engaging mess, mind you, the kind of mess appropriate for the urban blight, grey black expanses of highway, and rest stops Patrick had to draw on for inspiration after the Title of Record tour, but a mess only an alcoholic burning through the last of his rock star leeway could make. “God Damn Me,” a song that manages to be painful and cathartic in equal amount, could have been written on the same acoustic guitar used to write “Take a Picture” after realizing what an ass you made of yourself, the friend that had to document it, and the no-fly list you’re probably on now. The album’s most definitive moment comes on lead single and should have been hit “Where Do We Go From Here.” It’s the grand finale of the Filter project’s definitive era, fusing “Take a Picture”s acoustic stomp and “Hey Man Nice Shot”s big riffs for the most melancholy send off to the 90s and the older end of Generation X’s youth we’ve got. It’s the sound of the cultural lens moving beyond your age range and knowing it. In the song’s music video, Patrick and company find themselves in a teenage party, seemingly by accident and certainly uninvited. They’re ignored unless acknowledged as inconveniences, present only when infringing upon the proceedings, skateboarded around in the pool, clearing out the kitchen as they perform, having a vase thrown at them interrupting a makeout session. Filter are still in the party but only because nobody cares enough to ask them to leave yet. A-
I remember when I first followed Holiday Kirk on Twitter and swore allegiance to the nu-metal agenda, I was greeted with those four great words: Welcome to the Fold
You didn't mention it here because it's a song not really relevant to your thesis, but I have fond memories of pulling off backflips and no-handers in ATV Off-road Fury 2 to "American Cliche". "So I Quit" was also used as the opening theme!