(Our old friend Justin C returns to NCS with the following review of the new album by the re-named Seattle band Filth Is Eternal, which will be released on August 27th by Quiet Panic.)
We’ve all been there. Grandma wants to hear some of the rock ‘n roll music the crazy kids are making these days, and Fucked and Bound is an obvious choice. Grandma needs a shot of adrenaline, not some droning doom, after all! But will the name be too off-putting? Especially after church?
Well, the band has made your life a little easier now with a new name, Filth Is Eternal. No, they haven’t changed the name in a craven attempt at Top 40 success, or probably even for Grandma. It just turns out that getting the word out about all your hard work during a pandemic, with no live shows plus social media platforms flagging you left and right for potentially being naughty content, your choice might come down to a name change or complete obscurity, as the band explained to Decibel last month.
Even if you were the type to hold a grudge about the name change, I think it would be hard to maintain that stance after listening to the new album, Love Is a Lie, Filth Is Eternal. It’s the same high-energy, punky, grindy, thrashy goodness you loved on Suffrage, while managing to be both more ferocious and more refined at the same time. Not unlike “Wild Thing,” the opener from Suffrage, “On the Rake” starts Love Is a Lie like an explosion. Brian McClelland‘s dissonant, siren riff and Lisa Mungo‘s roar of “COMING DOWN!” starts off just over a minute of fury. Rah Davis on bass and Matt Chandler on drums continue to prove to be one of the tightest rhythm sections going.
A couple of things struck me immediately: The sound on this album is fantastic. I don’t typically nerd out about production and DR ratings, but while the music is raw and nasty, the way in which it’s captured is a wonder. The instruments have fantastic separation without sounding isolated from each other. Davis‘s bass is loud and proud, and Mungo‘s voice will end up being a tangible presence in your room/car/headphones. All the subtleties, like cymbal accents or twists and variations in the vocals come through.
The other thing that keeps this album on repeat for me is that, although it might be 12 songs in just about 20 minutes, it feels like a much larger musical experience. Plenty of bands could keep up pure fire for that amount of time, but would it be as interesting as this? There’s no real pause between “The Chain” and “Strange Men,” but you don’t have to be looking at your music device to feel the shift in mood. Songs like “Private Room” and “Deeper Void” mix up the tempo and general vibe, with the latter showing Mungo deliver her vocals in more of a snarl than a scream, with the instrumentals giving a less dense but still menacing vibe. “Love Is a Lie” is another minute and a half of hurtling-asteroid energy, and album closer “Filth Is Eternal” stretches out to a damn-near-epic four minutes, complete with slinky groove.
Sometimes when I go on a long-ish drive (which hasn’t happened much lately), I want an immersive, 70-minute deep dive into some weird slab of cosmic black metal, but Filth Is Eternal made an album that makes me say, “Fuck it, I’m just going to listen to this album seven times in a row.”
(For a full stream, visit the Revolver album premiere here.)
https://filthiseternal.bandcamp.com/album/love-is-a-lie-filth-is-eternal
https://www.facebook.com/filthiseternal