12/6/02 - Richard Patrick is out of rehab and is working with Wes Borland (ex-Limp Bizkit) on a song for a movie soundtrack. More details as they arrive. Also check out a new interview with Richard Patrick at Guitar.com

9/12/02 - The Song Meanings section of the site has been updated.

8/8/02 - Miss Truth, the gossip columnist over at CDNow, has had some rough things to say about Richard Patrick. These include:

We're trying very hard to not make this "Richard Patrick Week" in Miss Truth, but with Filter's new album, The Amalgamut recently released, the boy's simply in the press a lot right now and, well, what he says is often quite curious. For instance… 

Playboy.com's Dirty Dozen sex interview, July 30: "I'm a bachelor with a vengeance. Fucking different women is like a fuckin' sport to me. Yeah, I fuck groupies. Fuck yeah." Then when asked if he likes to talk dirty when he's having sex, he says, "No. Once again, there's nothing loving about it." Pick a side, boy! Sex as sport or sex as a loving act? The contradiction makes our head spin. 

Billboard magazine, July 27, interview: "The Amalgamut is the American melting pot come to fruition. We've melted, we're together. As much as the country has homogenized itself, there are a lot of special individuals out there." 

MTV, July 29: "It's all about creating a great big melting pot, and I think that's what America is all about. Especially here in southern California, you can't tell what [ethnic backgrounds] people are. You can't go, 'Oh, that's a black guy, this is a white guy.' Of course, there's black and white guys, but there are so many diverse, incredibly unique people all over this country because of the melting pot idea." 

Ok, we get the picture that he's, like, all into American now, and he likes the world today (see "World Today" from The Amalgamut ), and Sept. 11 affected him profoundly, and he means well. But, first, if The Amalgamut was really like the American melting pot, then the music, by definition, would be awash with different cultural or musical influences, and it's not. And, another little thing, the melting pot was not an "idea" someone created. It's simply what happened. 

And:

Miss Truth is pretty sure Filter's Richard Patrick isn't 8 years old, but you'd never know it by his most recent act of immaturity. 

Posting loud and proud on his official Web site on Monday (Aug. 4), Richard –- ah, can't we just call him Dick? -- brags about defecating in a Chicago dressing room over the weekend to get back at local rock critics.

"We played to a sold out concert [sic] in Chicago at the Ronald McDonald House of Burger King Blues, complete with a packed crowd and a willingness to piss off the local critics," he writes. "Except for the fans, that town has never given us any respect, and at this point I don't even care. So we took a shit in the dressing room and moved on to Detroit."

Classy, very classy!

It should be noted that "Miss Truth" is in fact Carrie Borzillo-Vrenna, wife of former Nine Inch Nail Chris Vrenna, which may help to explain the origin of this beef.

7/30/02 - The Amalgamut has landed, and needless to say, it is Filter at their finest. Here's a little review I snapped up after my first listen, to express the joy I was feeling:

With The Amalgamut, Filter have finally blown the lid off. The split personality evident in their two biggest hits, "Hey Man Nice Shot" and "Take A Picture", is once again apparent, and results in a multi-faceted record that is true rock n' roll for the new millennium. Songs like "Columind" and "So I Quit" are some of Filter's angriest and most hard-hitting to date. The melodic sheen of their previous Title of Record and the industrial rawness of their debut, Short Bus, have been put in a blender set to "Maximum Rock." Meanwhile the blissful beauty of hit "Take A Picture" has not been forgotten, as "Where Do We Go From Here" and "The Only Way (Is the Wrong Way)" signal crossover potential while maintaining the emotional intensity typical to Filter. The record ends on a wholly different note, with the final two tracks being the most experimental things the band has done to date. "The 4th", with a loop of Richard Patrick chanting ethereal nonsense over a surreal sonic landscape, wouldn't be out of place on Radiohead's enigmatic Kid A. Industrial, metal, pop, grunge; Richard Patrick and co. filter through it all, as befits their name, and combine the best elements into something all their own. Their newest creation is the sound of war, peace, love and hate; all amalgamated into one lovable mutt.

7/23/02 - Rolling Stone has weighed in with their take on the new Filter album, and gave it a solid three out of five stars. But one must take into account the fact that brilliant albums like Nirvana's Nevermind and Jane's Addiction's Ritual de lo Habitual got similarly good-but-not-great reviews in Rolling Stone when they were initially released, so the magazine's criticisms should be taken with a grain of salt. A full album preview of The Amalgamut is also available.

5/27/02 - Finally, after several long months of quiet, Filter is set to break the silence with a scream! A video for "Where Do We Go From Here" has been shot, a release date of July 30 has been set for The Amalgamut, some Locobazooka tour dates have been added, and Frank Cavanaugh is even sporting a new do. Apparently Alan Bailey will take his place as the obligatory bald guy in the band!

3/8/02 - Lots of news in Filterland. The Official Site has been updated with a new Rich Words, info on a new live guitarist in the band, and an updated tracklisting.

10/17/01 - Filter has made a surprise appearance at a Family Values tour concert. According to the Family Values website: Filter, joined Stone Temple Pilots for an impromptu version of Filter's "Hey Man, Nice Shot" this evening at the Allstate Arena outside of Chicago on the second night of the Family Values tour. After STP finished playing "Vasoline," Scott announced the arrival of "some very special guests." The lights went dim and Filter rushed on stage. The crowd-pleasing duet between Scott and Filter's Richard Patrick was watched by several of the bands on tour with Family Values, not wanting to miss an historic collaboration between two of rocks biggest bands.

9/29/01 - Finally, there is a new Rich Words at the official site.  In it, Rich goes over three new songs he has written as well as encouraging people to donate to the Red Cross.  In other Filter-related news, you may have heard about the list of songs supposedly banned from radio in light of the attacks on Sept. 11.  This list has been revealed to be not an actual banlist, but Filter's "Hey Man Nice Shot" is on it.  The lines "Now that the smoke's gone/ And the air is all clear/ Those who were right there/ Got a new kind of fear" do seem a little eery right now.

 8/31/01 - The Official Filter site has been updated.  It confirms that The Amalgamut is scheduled for an early 2002 release.  Apparently the band has finished the writing phase for the record and will be mixing and mastering the songs for the remainder of this year. The Official Filter site also states that Filter is expected to be touring on the Ozzfest 2002 outing next year.

 7/30/01 - According to various sources, it looks like The Amalgamut has been pushed back to a March 2002 release date.

 5/27/01 - The new Filter record is officially going to be called The Amalgamut, and will probably be released in August or June of 2001 through Warner Bros. Records.  To read about some of the reasoning behind the title of the record, check out the recent Rich Words at the official site.  For some more information on the new album, theres a good article here.  Known song titles include: My Long Walk To Jail, I Like The World Today, It Can Never Be The Same, You Walk Away, Goddamned Me, So I Quit, and It Will Always Remain (In My Head).

 4/26/01 - The Filter Discussion Group has closed and reopened at a new location.
 

 - Filter is one of the names being thrown around as a rumoured opening act for the new Guns N' Roses. The band recently sold out Madison Square Gardens, so it would be a big gig for Filter if true.

 - As Filter is expected to be included on Ozzfest 2002, here are a list of other bands rumoured to be attending: Rob Zombie, Kittie, System Of A Down, Machine Head, American Head Charge, Six Feet Under, Factory 81, Il Nino, and Ozzy Osbourne with Zakk Wylde.

 - Richard Patrick has been rumored to be involved with the Tapeworm Project.  This industrial/metal supergroup has yet to release an album, but is known to include members of Nine Inch Nails as well as guest appearances by Maynard James Keenan of Tool and Phil Anselmo of Pantera.

 - Filter may record a cover of "Jane Says" by Jane's Addiction with Limp Bizkit.  The full article can be found here.

 - Filter are listed as being rumored to cover the song "Love" for a possible Smashing Pumpkins tribute album. You can find the full article at chartattack.com.

 - An Alternative Press article from March 22, 1998 included a few rumors and possibilities that nothing seemed to come of.  Here's an excerpt from it: Filter's Richard Patrick has been added to the line-up of the impending Clash tribute album, slated for release on Epic.  Filter's contribution will be a version of "White Man in Hammersmith Palais".  Patrick and bassist Frank Cavanaugh are diligently working on the follow-up to 1995's "Short Bus" in Patrick's Chicago studio.  In unrelated news, Patrick told an A.P. correspondent that he might be recording a cover of Run D.M.C.'s "It's Tricky" with rouge rapper Busta Rhymes. Life just got weirder, folks.

 - An old article included Brian Liesegang mentioning the possibility of a Filter side-project called "Philtre" (according to a dictionary, a word meaning a potion or charm intended to excite the passion of love).  Here's an excerpt from the article: Liesegang also said that he and Patrick are considering creating some music for some Sony Playstation games. If so, they'll likely use a different name, possibly Philtre. "We love making music," said Liesegang. "Sometimes the music we make isn't necessarily Filter music, or a 'Filter Artistic Statement,' so we need to find other avenues of expressing that stuff. We're working on a semi-ambient record, but we need to find a way to make people understand that's it's not the next Filter record."

 - In an old AOL interview from October 23, 1995, talk about the Dust Brothers sprung up and Richard Patrick was quoted as saying "Brian and I have this idea to give them all the tapes and just let them do an entirely different record called Short Dust. It's just an idea, but I think if we do a whole record with them, where every song is different and fucked up and tweaked, that's something that we can listen to and hopefully our fans will get off on it." Obviously that never ended up happening, but it was an interesting idea.