By the time The Amalgamut released, Filter were in disarray. After a solid debut with Short Bus and a commercial monster with Title of Record, the band had tremendous pressure on them.

Take a picture was a crossover hit and the label expected an album full of them. Probably never paid attention to the lyrics, as the catchy ballad had darker themes in it. Filter weren’t strangers to calmer tracks. Short Bus had Stuck in Here and So Cool. Title of Record’s superb Captain Bligh ends its barrage of anger and desperation with an acoustic moment of introspection.

Labels trying to shoehorn a band into a single genre due to a single are an artist’s worst enemy.

So, label pressure, a substance abuse problem, and band strife all contributed to The Amalgamut getting delayed persistently. Lead single Where Do We Go From Here was a lamentation, perhaps even a call for help. Light a torch, find a way out from this mess you’re in. It wasn’t the follow up for Take a Picture the general public and the label wanted, so it didn’t do the expected numbers. American Cliché didn’t do better, although it was better received by hardcore Filter fans.

I purchased a copy while living in Nottingham and I found the contrasts on genre starker than in Title of Record. Not a complaint, I was not in a good place emotionally and I need the harshest of rockers like You Walk Away and So I Quit, and I needed a helping hand to guide me along cold, bitter nights. God Damn Me and It Can Never Be the Same had hands full of introspection with the sonic wizardry I needed from the band.

There are two songs off The Amalgamut I always listen to before going through the whole album. The Missing was prescient on its mournfulness, capturing the zeitgeist of late 2001 as events unfolded both in the USA and the rest of the world, events with consequences we still live through today. Richard Patrick’s scream is chilling here, a climax of sadness and anger mixed like a binary agent, exploding through your speakers.

The only way (is the wrong way) speaks volumes. “With me or against me” was part of the every day political discourse, thanks to Bush. The polarization of arguments, as predicted by Hunter S. Thompson’s brutal post-911 article, skulks on the back of The only way. Pushing becomes shoving. Changing demands carrying larger loads, scuppering any chance of change. It’s morose and brimming with resignation. It’s lamentation and a call to speak the truth. It’s one of my top three Filter songs.

Filter would fade after The Amalgamut. Richard Patrick went to rehab and joined the DeLeo brothers for Army of Anyone and The Damning Well, two supergroups with short lives. Filter would reform for the politically charged Anthems for the damned in 2008, and subsequently released albums in a quinquennial (or so) fashion.

-Sam J. Valdés López