Earlier this week, Richard Patrick announced online that he was bringing his band Filter back into the fold, with a new release in 2008. Now the band founder has told MTV News that he has 25 new tracks to choose from for Anthems For The Damned, which could be out as soon as late March.
Patrick told MTV he has been working on new songs on and off over the past four years. “I’m not straying from that classic Filter sound,” Patrick told MTV. “But, because I’m a little older and a little wiser, [the sound has] definitely evolved. The first two or three songs are just straight-up industrial powerhouses, and then it goes into the huge-sounding stuff that people are kind of familiar with.”
Patrick spent last year in the supergroup Army Of Anyone, alongside ex-Stone Temple Pilots members Dean and Robert DeLeo. That band is on hiatus, though Patrick said he’d love to “do more records with them in the future.” While touring with Army Of Anyone and performing Filter tunes, Patrick realized he had to go back to his old material.
“This is not a comeback,” he said. “Filter’s my legacy. It’s just like Al Jourgensen with Ministry. This is something I took very seriously, something I quit Nine Inch Nails to do, and it has allowed me so much freedom as an artist. I would never turn my back on the thing that has always been the #1 thing in my life. And the core fans that I have, they’re expecting a great record. I knew I’d have to return with the goods, and I’m absolutely convinced that that’s what I have with this record.”
Patrick worked with uber-drummer Josh Freese, ex-Marilyn Manson guitarist John 5 and Wes Borland of Limp Bizkit and Black Light Burns fame on the new Filter songs. As for the lyrical content of Anthems For The Damned, Patrick got political on the new songs. “I’m having a look around, as a person, and I look at us humans and I just think, ‘What are we going to tell people? How are we going to explain ourselves in 100 years when the planet’s f—ed up and you can’t repair it?’,” Patrick told MTV. “Every song is just so anthemic; it just has this hugeness to it, that I was just like, ‘These are anthems for the damned.’ With this record, I’m just throwing my hands up in the air, going, ‘I guess we’re just going to f— this sh– up, and ruin the planet.’ It’s a little less optimistic and more inspired by frustration and anger toward what we’re doing. It comes from a way darker place, and it’s heavy — the first three songs are really heavy, and I’m proud of that. I miss that in music. I don’t want to pigeonhole myself, but it’s almost like a heavy U2 record.”
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