Album review: Filth Is Eternal – Find Out
Seattle punks Filth Is Eternal get grungy but refuse to fuck around on smashing third album Find Out.
What a difference a few years make. When they first formed back in 2018, Filth Is Eternal didn't have much thought for longevity: the Seattle outlaws going by provocative moniker Fucked And Bound and expecting just to spew a few 7” singles of grubbily vitriolic basement punk before gloriously burning out. Yet here they are in 2023, bedding in for the long haul on a third LP loaded with positive affirmations and sonic confirmation of their status as the 'd-beat Distillers'
That album title – Find out – has two meanings. Obviously, there's a version that comes silently prefixed with 'Fuck Around And…' as songs like Half Wrong and Body Void detonate in barely-contained, sub-two minute blasts of righteous rage. But it’s also all about finding out where the limits of our own potential lies. Having decamped with renowned producer Paul Fig (Slipknot, AFI, Alice In Chains) to Dave Grohl’s Studio 606, vocalist Lis Di Angelo and their bandmates dig into the unlikely expansion of their band on the likes of Cherish and Pressure Me while broadening the sonic palette, adding elements of more mainstream alt. and the acid wash of grunge.
Somehow, it’s even more thrilling than what’s come before. Compared to the brutalist rapid-fire of 2020’s Suffrage and 2021’s Love Is A Lie, Filth Is Eternal, the increased polish on Find Out only sharpens its serrated cutting-edge, and by the time the unhinged Last Exit careers into relatively epic closer Loveless, any doubts will have been carved to bits.
With 14 tracks blurring by in well under half an hour with zero fucking around, of course, you’re left wanting more. But that’s the point. Filth Is Eternal, and they’re still just getting started.
For fans of: Discharge, The Distillers, Converge
Find Out is out on September 29 via MNRK Heavy