FILTER The Amalgamut (Warner) Rating: NN Rating: NN
For some reason, I always expect, if not great or even good things, at least more than I get from Filter. That's true of The Amalgamut. The disc's lead single, Where Do We Go From Here, with its 70s nods and pop-heavy leanings, is as good as it gets and not indicative of the rest of the album, which takes a brief melodic acoustic turn with The Only Way (Is The Wrong Way) and then harkens back to mid-period U2 with the ghostly rhythms of World Today. Much of rest, however, falls back into all that formulaic thrash industrial metal boring crap that has been done to death. It feels as though Filter have the talent but lack the motivation to move on and make a truly great record.