Richard Patrick, Filter frontman, is angry.
Filter will stop by Athens on its “Make America Hate Again” tour today at the Georgia Theatre with Orgy, Vampires Everywhere and Death Valley High.
Patrick said it’s been too long since America has heard from a band who wanted to talk about the upsetting, depressing and maddening things about life. Cue Filter.
“You have to bring balance to the music world. You can’t just have so much sugary, ‘Baby, I love you’ goopy pop songs,” Patrick said. “The so-called alternative music is the same thing. It’s just benign. Everyone just stands there. No one is passionate. What we brought in the alternative movement back in the day was so much more genuine and so much more authentic.”
Filter’s songs might be loud and angry, but they’re about something bigger than being heartsick, Patrick said.
“All the bigger bands from the ’90s were just ripping our vocal chords out, we were trying so hard to convey our emotions, and I can still do that. I feel great when I do, making a big huge scream and stuff like that,” Patrick said.
Patrick has kept Filter alive. The band released a new album, “Crazy Eyes,” on April 8.
The record is a return to the grunge of the band’s beginnings in the 1990s.
“The Filter fans are saying it’s like the best record we’ve done in our career,” Patrick said. “I think that’s because I produced the record and I made sure I kept all the rough edges and just the generally attitude instead of a producer bringing out the most perfectly sung performance.”
The former guitarist for Nine Inch Nails said he wanted to keep the record’s sound raw. On the album he approaches serious topics, such as mass shooters.
“I wanted to do something that sounded like the mind of something who lost it completely. ‘Mother E’ is the perfect example. This is what the crazy-eyed killers that we see every day are thinking. It’s just an examination,” Patrick said.
He hates the phrase “mellowing with age,” because that’s not at all what he sees in himself. Current events, such as the presidential campaign of Donald Trump, anger him.
“Donald Trump is clearly tapping into some dark underbelly that our country has, not unlike what Hitler did,” Patrick said. “This is what all my heroes would do, and in honor of them I’m going to lash out at Donald Trump because there is a dark situation going on with this candidate.”
That’s what heavy rock music does best, he said.
“We’re exposing the dark truth and we’re bringing the energy of what it sounds like to the people,” Patrick said.
What frustrates he most of all is when artists waste their opportunity to share original thoughts with the world, what he tries to do with each new release.
“I want to make a difference. I want to talk about real (stuff). I don’t want to sit here and talk about how lovesick I am all the time. I’m not a 20-year-old boy like Justin Beiber, I’m a full-grown man who can scream and let it out and knows anger,” Patrick said.
The show at the Georgia Theatre starts at 6:30 p.m. today, and tickets are $20-$25.
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