Cleveland, Ohio’s Filter first came on the scene in 1995 with their industrial rock album Short Bus. The album was popularized in large partly due to the song "Hey Man Nice Shot," which, along with their breakthrough "Take A Picture," launched Filter into the mainstream. Shortly after the release of their underrated album The Amalgamut in 2002, the band’s subsequent tour was cancelled when lead singer Richard Patrick checked himself into rehab. Patrick came back with new members and recorded Filter’s most recent album, Anthems For The Damned, their fourth studio album.
The album kicks off with the intensified, provocative single "Soldiers Of Misfortune." The song has many elements of a classic Filter track: crunchy guitars, industrial sounds and Patrick’s dichotomous voice that often times sounds like a pissed-off Sting or Bono. The song is, without a doubt, a pro-troop, anti-war piece, with lyrics such as "So pray/For the soldiers of misfortune/The soldiers of distortion/Dig a grave." The song was inspired by a letter to Patrick from a Filter fan who had enlisted in the Army Reserves to get his college tuition paid. In his final year of college, he was shipped off to Iraq and was killed by a rocket attack after just a few days of duty.
The best song on the album, "Cold (Anthem For The Damned)," starts off at a semi-slow but upbeat pace, only to explode with guitar and Patrick’s emotive voice. The song has the same kind of earthy feel that epitomized the band’s 1999 single "Take A Picture" – their biggest hit to date. Lyrically, the song is as every bit of hit-and-miss as many other Filter songs such as "Picture," but the music is so great that one is not likely to notice.
While Filter can still kick out a good hard rock/metal sound when they want to, the band fully shines on slow songs. Many of the heavier songs aren’t quite up to par with their previous work, but should be enough to appease fans of their previous two albums.
