In contrast to many of his peers, Filter bandleader Richard Patrick successfully navigated the 1990s and emerged with flying colors. Over the past three decades, the former Nine Inch Nails guitarist overcame his addictions, landed a million-dollar contract for his post-NIN band Filter, survived the collapse of the traditional music industry and has come out the other side intact.
“That was a horrendous, scary-ass time in my life because Nine Inch Nails had just signed this huge record deal,” Patrick recalled in a mid-February interview. “But I just wanted to be my own boss. I wanted to experience life without being attached to something that was one guy’s vision. I was like, ‘I think I can do this and make a living at it.’ And I have been for the past 30 years.”
He’ll be plying his trade locally next week, as his current band, Filter, will share the bill with Alter Bridge and Tim Montana at 5 p.m. Monday, May 18, at the Roxian Theatre, 425 Chartiers Ave. in McKees Rocks.
Today, Patrick makes his music with absolute autonomy in his own studio. Working outside the major-label ecosystem, he has full control of his approach from beginning to end. It’s a trajectory he could hardly have imagined back when the music industry was riding high.
“There was tons of money back in the day,” said Patrick, whose label spent more than $600,000 on Filter’s debut album. “My engineer bought a house with the money he made from making Filter records. And now I’m the engineer. I’m strapping on the guitar, playing the bass, programming the drums, recording all the vocals. Making records is so much more fun right now. The pressure is just not there.”
“Fun” isn’t necessarily the first word that comes to mind with Filter’s most recent album, the politically strident 2023 album “The Algorithm,” which the website Biff Bam Pop! says “assaults the listener with noises from the other side of sanity.” “New Noise” magazine echoed the sentiment, calling the record “consistently heavy-heavier-heavy throughout.”
Patrick argues that machinery and social media algorithms currently exacerbate political extremes. These digital feeds construct isolated realities. They leave opposing factions unaware of one another. The technology dictates the public discourse.
“We are a sum total of our algorithms when it comes to certain things, technologically speaking,” he said. “It’s pretty wild how some things can happen and some of my friends on the right have no idea what is going on, and it’s the same for us on the left. It’s a very divisive time in the world. So the album is about the problem — the algorithm — and then there’s ‘The Antidote.’ That’s the next record.”
With both albums, the reward for Patrick lies in the writing and recording process. “Having my own studio,” he said, “I can just go in and exhaust all my ideas and no one has to hear them.”
While fans can still hear tracks omitted from the original release, last summer saw the release of “The Algorithm: Ultra Edition,” which includes nine additional tracks from the same sessions, including four remixes of previously released songs as well as covers of Billie Eilish’s “Bad Guy” and U2’s “A Sort of Homecoming.”
Filter will not perform those covers on the current tour, Patrick said, but audiences can instead expect a career-spanning selection of favorites. The setlist includes “Snakes in the Grass,” a new single that will debut on this run, as well as songs from “The Algorithm” and “The Antidote.”
The tour also marks three decades since Filter’s platinum-selling 1995 debut album, “Short Bus.” Audiences can expect the band, which currently includes Patrick, guitarist Johnny Radtke, bassist/keyboardist Bobby Miller and drummer Elias Mallin, to deliver early tracks like the hit single from that first album, “Hey Man Nice Shot,” exactly as written. What they shouldn’t expect is an encore. It is an approach Patrick says eliminates the theatrical fatigue of traditional rock shows. For him, the music takes precedence over the spectacle.
“‘Hey Man Nice Shot’ is one of the most bombastic songs in the set,” Patrick said. “It’s definitely a crowd-pleaser. We always end the show with it and it’s so powerful. We can’t even come back and do encores usually because we’re just like, that was it. Sometimes we might do an encore when it’s like super special, but I usually make an announcement like, ‘Hey man, this is all the songs we’re going to do tonight. We love you so much. We’re not going to make you stand and give us praise while we walk off stage and have a cigarette and come back. We’re just going to leave it all out here tonight.'”
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