Filter

“We don’t take vacations,” says Filter founder and frontman Richard Patrick, and The Amalgamut, the band’s long-awaited third album on Reprise Records, is all the proof anyone could ask for. These dozen fierce and formidable tracks were conceived and executed after two solid years on the road and without so much as a pause to catch their collective breath. “What’s the point of chilling out in the Bahamas for a couple of weeks?” Patrick asks. “You start unwinding, you lose your edge. We had a job to do. It was time to get on with it.”

The job at hand was the follow-up to Filter’s platinum-plus 1999 release, Title Of Record, featuring the smash hits “Take A Picture” and “Welcome To The Fold,” which itself provided proof that the band’s 1995 debut album Short Bus with its provocative single “Hey Man, Nice Shot,” was far more than just a fluke. Simply put, since he first threw down the musical gauntlet by forming Filter, Richard Patrick has never looked back, slowed down or let up. And he’s not about to start now. “I’ll be brutally honest with you,” says Patrick, who seems genetically incapable of being anything but, “the music from Title Of Record came out of the darkest and most painful period of my life. I was in a relationship that crashed and burned and I almost didn’t make it out of the wreckage. I was pulling creativity out of chaos. This time around it’s a totally different scenario.”

No question about it: while Filter’s high-impact, hardwired sound is as fiercely uncompromising and consistently unpredictable as ever, the energy and intent of The Amalgamut seems to be coming from an entirely different space. “I’m not about preaching,” Patrick insists. “But if there’s a message to this music it’s that we live in a country that gives us the freedom to dream big and the diversity to do it each our own way. People died for that freedom and that means none of us has the right to waste our lives. You can call that patriotic if you want. I don’t put labels on it. I just know that I’m an American, 13th generation, and proud of it. I recently discovered I have some Cherokee blood in me and I’m proud of that heritage too. All I can do is be the best I can be and that’s what has made this country great from the beginning.” It’s an explanation aptly summed up in the album’s title, combining the amalgamation of the American melting pot with the gamut of its diversity. “It’s also about being a mutt,” Patrick adds with a grin. “Because in this country, that’s what most of us are.”

The diversity that Filter celebrates on The Amalgamut is reflected in an astonishing spectrum of sounds that give these tracks a depth and dimension rare in contemporary music. From the relentless pulse of the debut single “Where Do We Go” to the haunting intensity of “This Missing” to the epic guitarscapes of “The 4th,” The Amalgamut is the work of a band at the peak of its creative powers – energized, optimistic and inspired. “There’s a spontaneity that runs through all this music,” Patrick asserts. “It’s that great feeling you get when something that didn’t exist fifteen minutes ago is suddenly out there, alive and kicking. We carried that creative joy through the whole process.”

It’s also a process that brought four disparate musicians together as a full-fledged band for the first time. “We all made a contribution to creating the whole,” remarks guitarist Geno Lenardo, who wrote some key tracks with Patrick, including the muscular and manic “My Long Walk To Jail.” “That’s what comes from working together for so long. We really understood how to bring out the best in each other and Richard realized the time had come for us to step up as a band.” “I really opened it up,” Patrick agrees. “For a long time, Filter was basically me: my music, my responsibility. But deep down I’ve always wanted to be in a group, with real creative give and take and these guys have made that a reality.”

It was a reality forged on the road as Patrick, along with Lenardo, drummer Steve Gillis and bassist Frank Cavanagh, embarked on a virtually non-stop touring schedule in support of Title Of Record that took them to four continents over two years and earned them a solid international following in the process. “When you do two hundred shows together, you break down the ego barriers or they break you down,” Patrick asserts. “We learned what it meant to work together for a common goal and at the same time push ourselves into new places creatively. That’s what a band does and when it’s right, it’s totally organic.” He laughs. “We’re a four-legged beast now.”

Bringing that beast into the studio was a challenge Patrick, engineer Rae DiLeo and producer Ben Grosse (who was also behind the boards on Title Of Record) met head on. Without the obligatory depressurizing delay, Filter stormed off the road and straight into Abyssinian Sons, the Chicago studio Patrick had built and quickly refurbished, to begin work on a new album. “We don’t write on the road,” he explains. “When we’re touring, we tour. When we’re recording that’s what we do. I wrote ‘God Damn Me’ in the studio in the first few days and it just went from there.”

As intent as the group may have been on maintaining their momentum, the nearly year-long process of writing and recording The Amalgamut proceeded at an unhurried pace. “I’ve learned a lot, not just about music, but about who I am,” Patrick reveals. “If you want people to love you, you’ve got to love yourself. Part of doing this album was getting off my own back and giving my creativity room to breathe. The pressure was off and I felt like I could truly be myself. One of the happiest times I can ever remember was sitting in the studio putting down the vocals to ‘The Only Way Is The Wrong Way.’ I knew this was what I was meant to do. There was no second-guessing. I was like I’d had finally arrived.”

He pauses, searching for the words to describe the transformation that has taken Filter from a fledging upstart to an undeniable force to be reckoned with. “Everybody’s got a gimmick,” he says at last. “You might be satanic. Maybe you’re depressed. Or angry. I guess you could say our gimmick is that we don’t allow limits. Our job is simple: to take this music as far as it can go.”

For Filter, that’s a job that leaves no room for vacations.