Album Review: Filth Is Eternal - Love is a Lie, Filth is Eternal
Reviewed by Dan Barnes
Previous known as Fucked and Bound, Seattle’s Filth is Eternal certainly live up to their name on this new release, the (almost) self-titled Love is a Lie, Filth is Eternal. Clocking in at a modest nineteen minutes, yet boasting a dozen tracks, it is a collection of Punk N’ Roll pulled to its most extreme conclusion.
The swagger and attitude of Pearl Slug could have seen it stepping from a DC club in the early 1980s, while the post-punk stylings of Wigsplitter could have been drifting from college dorms up and down the country.
But it is Hardcore in which you’ll find Filth is Eternal to be the most comfortable, as they delivery their vitriol in predominantly sub-two-minute whirlwinds of aggressive catharsis. The Dog, Nosebleed and The Rake are all about the face-ripping brutality and whiplash rhythms; destined, each, to become pit classics.
Although short and to the point, Love is a Lie, Filth is Eternal isn’t content to visit the same well for the entirety of the run-time. For all the Hardcore and Punk, there is also the grimiest of dirty sludge present. Brian McClelland’s guitar on the epic Filth is Eternal is slow and mean, complementing Lisa Mungo’s tortured vocals as Rah Davies and Mat Chandler hold it all together on bass and drum respectively.
The band sound tight and locked in across the record, yet are each allowed a platform to express themselves fully during Private Room. A groovy bass-line plays beside a spikey guitar as Lisa’s edgy vocals wails like a banshee above a drum sound that has a certain swing to it.
There are moments of calm amid the chaos, as on Deeper Void, when a clean guitar and clean vocal sound, together with a more controlled rhythm section give the track an almost Gothic feel.
Love is a Lie, Filth is Eternal’s latest is twenty-minutes of gritty Hardcore Punk N’ Roll with a sprinkling of Southern doom laced in for good measure. It’s a furious stomp through a dozen tracks of dirty, in your face, musical mayhem that is well worth a listen.
