For their third album Filter has decided to flex their muscle to be in sync with today's trends. As a result, The Amalgamut is an untidy and hardly homogeneous effort that cruelly lacks spontaneity while the melodious songs are drowned in an indigestible racket.
From the CD cover showing frontman Richard Patrick wearing a hood to the trashy guitars on deformed tracks where the singer screams "Motherfucker", Filter's approach is clearly calculated and opportunist in an attempt to surf on the current trash-core wave.
Songs like the catchy "American Cliché " (an appropriate title for this CD) and the oafish "Columind", "My Long Way To Jail" and "So I Quit" point to Linkin Park and their metallic compadres who are not known for their craftsmanship while "You Walk Away" sounds like Alice in Chains. But the most laughable track is undoubtedly their Radiohead imitation on "World Away".
In the vein of their previous albums, melodious songs like the powerful single "Where Do We Go From Here" and the beautiful folky ballads "The Missing", "The Only Way" and "God Damn Me" save the day and prove that Filter hasn't completely lost its talent for harmonies. Let's just hope that next time, the band will draw inspiration from within rather than from MTV.
Filter The Amalgamut
