Filter were alternative rock kings with mega hits like "Hey Man, Nice Shot" and "Take A Picture", radio favorites that actually had depth. Truth be told, the rest of the Richard Patrick led band's output over the years is just as strong as or stronger than their biggest hits. Check out "Jurassitol" from THE CROW: CITY OF ANGELS soundtrack or the beautiful glowing chorus from the common humanity/anti-war themed "Hatred Is Contagious" from ANTHEMS FOR THE DAMNED and you will find a band that, regardless of time, place and obstacles faced, have pushed on through.

Richard Patrick is very energized these days and is playing some of the best shows of his life. This energy can surely be heard loud and clear within the highs and lows of the colorful sounds featured on Filter's latest album THE TROUBLE WITH ANGELS. "The Inevitable Relapse" finds Patrick grappling with the theme of drug abuse and throttling it to the ground over blaring guitars while elsewhere tracks like "Drug Boy" and "No Love" are no less anthemic. Filter are here to stay and still very relevant in 2010. Real fans of the band already are ecstatic about the latest release, while Filter's live show is (to reiterate) the best it has been in years. I spoke to the always interesting to talk to Richard Patrick about the energies behind this record and how he's leaving his troubles behind him and enjoying life.

MORGAN Y. EVANS: How are you doing, man? The new record is incredible. A great direction.

RICHARD PATRICK: Great! If I had a million more of ya we’d be putting together a big ass fuckin’ stage like U2 except our s will be meaner.

MYE: You’ve done industrial stuff, rock stuff and pop. To me, that’s a challenge to undertake all those things. Many bands settle for one mode. The last record I loved “Hatred Is Contagious”. This new record brings a lot of stuff together in a strong way.

RP: This record is like mission accomplished. I don’t mean George Bush “Mission Accomplished”. I mean like Obama mission accomplished. ANTHEMS was a very myopic protest record about a friend of mine that was killed. I felt I needed to honor the sadness of the whole thing. This record was business as usual. This was let’s get back to TITLE OF RECORD, SHORT BUS, AMALGAMUT. The sound that put me on the map in the first place. I felt it was important to maintain the level of songwriting and hopefully expand on it. So, Bob Marlett and I and Mitch Marlow did four songs together in the beginning. It was,”That’s it. That’s the sound.” You’ve got ”Drug Boy” which is kind of the “Welcome To The Fold” intense, screamed verses and super huge chorus and payoff bridge section. Then we did “No Love”, which is very contemporary sounding. It’s a song that bridges the world of “Take A Picture” almost. It’s not all about the riff, but it is. We put the riff in there. It was so complicated that we put almost a paragraph of lyrics in there ‘til the riff. From the verse section to the big huge riff, there were three parts added to make that song work. Bob Marlett is a super genius. We work on everything together now. We’re even doing a movie soundtrack together.

MYE: I’m sure that’ll be cool. Like you said, there is some of the raw energy from when the band first came out, that excitement…not that some recent stuff didn’t have that. But there’s also the full package of the songwriting craft you’ve developed for Filter over the years.

RP: Yeah. Thank you. The mission now is to get every self respecting rock fan to hear it and to also work hard. I know that there’s nothing…I can’t go any better. I am so proud of this record. It hasn’t even gotten a bad review. Not that I dwell on that stuff, but someone told me,”we just don’t have a slamming bad review on this record by any kind of reputable site.” In fact, I actually challenged Rolling Stone. I dared them to give it a bad review.

MYE: (laughing)

RP: (chuckling) I did. They’ve got time for all this other stuff. Let’s make the time for a really great record. They actually sent a guy to our show at The Bowery Ballroom and he was already a Filter fan and he said it was the best show he’d ever seen. Now he’s just gotta talk about it!

MYE: I feel like some time in the recent history people started shying away from hard rock and think of it as bad in some way. It’s only bad when it is insincere. Sure, you’ve had some big choruses but all your songs are genuine.

RP: The reality is, look who I was in 1985. I was this kid who…my first band was called The Act. It was literally, “Hey, you really like U2, don’t ya?” (laughing) I was in The Act and Trent Reznor was in The Exotic Birds. We were figuring out what we were trying to do. I bumped into him years later in ’87. He asked what I was listening to lately and I said,”I’m listening to all this industrial stuff like Skinny Puppy and Ministry.” He said,”I am too.” He’d just gotten a record deal and said it was called Nine Inch Nails and he said we should do it together. So we went off and did Nine Inch Nails, but that little U2 fan was always there in that I like a chorus that pays off. When you hear “Welcome To The Fold” or even “Take A Picture” they have big choruses that pay off.

MYE: Even “Hey Man, Nice Shot”, which has a huge riff.

RP: I’m not trying to pat myself on the back or say I am some kind of guitar hero because I actually pride myself on how bad of a guitar player I am. It’s like Jack White. He says sometimes you have to struggle with the guitar to make it really sound the way you need it. He plays plastic guitars and they are all crazy. I struggled with the guitar as well. So did the Edge. He threw delays on and effects to get through it and come up with original sounding stuff. Through his limitation he’s become this insane archetypal architect of sound…the most beautiful sounding guitar stuff. Everything from “Pride” to ninety, that guy was rewriting the rule book completely AND in the biggest band in the world.

MYE: Yeah, you play to your strengths. It’s almost like punk. You might end up cresting some wave and finding a new territory.

RP: Yeah. So when I had that nice payoff chorus of “Hey Man, Nice Shot”, all I had to do is scream over that chorus and it drew people in. Since then, a song like “No Love”, the chorus isn’t that complicated guitar wise so we put a lot of movement in the vocals. That was my challenge from Bob, he said,” You’re not giving enough information in your songs.” Today, contemporary music is about having way more words. So I wrote an entire paragraph between the pre-chorus and the payoff “No Love!”. That big scream over the riff. It was an amazing learning experience, but even back in Nine Inch Nails we always wanted to make sure we had that songwriting, that song structure payoff. If you can sit with an acoustic guitar and play your song on its’ own, if you break it down…if you can play the basic melody of a song with just a piano and it sounds good, I mean, you’re really kind of batting a thousand. No matter what you do production-wise you’re gonna have an easier job than if you are completely relying on just the sound of an instrument to make it. Even the Edge was still writing songs.

MYE: Definitely. Or even when Johnny Cash covered “Hurt” and did the sparse version of Trent’s song taken out of the industrial context.

RP: Yeah. I think so. Here we are having this big huge topic and this heady music stuff and look at how eclectic the bands are we’re bringing up. Cash, Nine Inch Nails, Skinny Puppy, U2. So right there, people say,”Oh, it’s industrial.” Well, yeah. There were millions of people that bought my early records and understood them but there were others that said,”wait, you’re not gonna spoon feed me the same ten songs and have them sound the same?” But…there’s a softer side to The Deftones. There’s a heavier side to U2, you know what I mean? People that understand the dynamic of Filter know we are eclectic. It’s not like I’m stretching out and playing blues or reggae. I’m expansive in the world of what I like to call modern rock. I don’t know what that means for you but for me it means everything after the year 1990. I draw from stuff that doesn’t have any real roots in blues or classical or country. It comes from a twenty year period.

MYE: It’s all from your life, too.

RP: “Take A Picture” fans show up and they are different folks sometimes than “Hey Man, Nice Shot” fans. The guys show up and wanna mosh and the women are in the back and they’re just like…

MYE: (in fake high pitched girly voice) “We love you, Richard!”

RP: (laughing) “We wanna hear “The Only Way Is The Wrong Way”. That’s cool. The same kids in my audience are gonna go to a Deftones show but they’re gonna also go to a Radiohead show. They should go to an MGMT shot. I’ve never been a fan of the “I’m the genre!” mentality. (in spooky voice) “I wear black leather! I fucking took a picture in front of an old church and we made it look like an old gothic castle and I look like a VAAAMPIIIRE!!!” (laughing)

MYE: (laughing)

RP: It’s more like Foo Fighters where if we’re in an interview we’re gonna joke around. There’s some funny interview where I had just got back from Germany and was delirious and it is literally funny how delirious I was. We throw shit at each other and have fun.

MYE: Well, you sound really animated. I was wondering with the task of making each album, what else do you do to replenish your energy between records? ANTHEMS FOR THE DAMNED was a very psychologically heavy record. What did you do to clear the channels and get ready to allow new creative energy to fill that space?

RP: I’m taking on different projects. There’s nothing like touring. Now that I’m sober and don’t have to drink to get on stage and it’s a relatively simple process. It’s like, “You know those cool songs you wrote and rehearsed so much and know so well? Now you just have to get on stage and rock the fuck out and have a good time!” (laughing). Everything is section nature and easy. It’s so painful to watch these shows from the nineties and remember I’d done a two day coke binge and had to do more drugs to get on stage cuz I was so fuckin’…ughh…so hung over. Dude, my voice is the way it’s supposed to sound. I sing high because it’s easy and raspy. That’s the way my voice sounds. Touring is fun. My band mates are fun. Even John Spiker, who is moving more to the production world…he and I talk all the time. He’s a friend. Mitch Marlow is not on tour with us because he wants to start a family with his wife and he’s got lots of projects he works on…he’s still my friend and I love him. I think he’d still come out on tour with us if we got to a certain size and were playing bigger rooms.. I’d add a second guitar player because that’s the true Filter sound. Two guitars. Right now we’re enjoying being the punk version of the band. Maybe you get a backdrop. We get up and just fuckin’ wail on you. It’s a well played rock concert. If you can’t do it without your props and hiding behind a wall of shit, that’s bullshit. That’s something you do if you really are out of ideas. It’s like when U2 went out and did The Joshua Tree…they had, like, four lights.

MYE: Big shows are great and all but at the end of the day the only way to really know is to bring it down and prove that… BOOM! There it is.

RP: Yeah.

MYE: I like what you said about your voice, that you do what you do. I was talking with a friend about Black Label Society and how some people thought Zakk Wylde had a weird voice when he started singing. I like that after all the BLS albums now he has stuck to it and it is cool and he is being himself. That’s how dude sounds. With you, you have a very cool voice but some people are insecure and only do what people think they should be doing.

RP: When I did SHORTBUS it was like…,”Do these people know I can’t sing?” How did I get a record deal? (laughing) That’s how completely insecure I was about my voice. It’s just weird. 95% of singing is,”I think it’s cool so you think it’s cool.” It was a real battle to just relax and think my voice was awesome and enjoy it. After “Take A Picture” it was easier. “Ok, I went platinum…you can enjoy my voice now.” (laughing) That was when I finally guessed I sang ok.

MYE: It’s your voice anyway so you might as well have a good time.

RP: Exactly. Everything is gravy! There’s nothing to lose. I quit Nine Inch Nails right before the pinnacle of their thing and I struck out on my own and still made it. Everyone thought it was ok and liked it. I feel like “mission accomplished” and again, this record is to me the best. I’m proud of it. Every interview is fun. I keep it fun and relaxing.

MYE: I like that you have the confidence to do mellower stuff. I didn’t have a band for awhile and finally played some acoustic shows cuz I was getting so pent up. I played acoustic and was shaking cuz I didn’t even realize I was nervous after not gigging for awhile! It was so vulnerable and that’s a whole other frontier that you conquered and absorbed. Could you also talk about some of the themes of THE TROUBLE WITH ANGELS?

RP: THE TROUBLE WITH ANGELS conceptually if you look at the art, there are some messages. Is religion…are we big enough as a species to let go of the security blanket and get rid of some of the superstitions or do we still need it? Religion has left its’ mark on humanity. Science and knowledge have expanded it, to a certain degree. When Islamic Jihadists wanna cut your head off…it’s not so good. There’s trouble with those angels. When the inquisition goes on and 70,000 people are killed, mostly burned at the stake…

MYE: That’s shitty.

RP: Yeah. There’s trouble with those angels. That’s the reason why we have separation of church and state. I don’t want someone’s invisible thing telling me what to do, because it’s usually just a man. Look at Iran. Their president answers to a guy who claims he’s clairvoyant to the lord. You’re running a country? You are literally running a country and you’re pursuing nuclear weapons because you listen to your Ayatollah? He hears voices? Ok. He hears voices in his head? Ok. I mean, that’s the definition of schizophrenia! What else…”The Inevitable Relapse”, in this record Bob had reminded me that some crazy things had come out of my addiction. “Take A Picture” was a clear cry for help from alcoholic suffering. I was suicidal. People relate to that. They don’t necessarily take it as far as I did, but let’s talk about that stuff. Relapse. “Relapse within the confines of your music.” I love the video for that song. You’re a hostage, the guy is a hostage. He is taken up the stairs. He doesn’t know why he was there. He was kidnapped, who knows? She beats him to a pulp. He escapes for a second and stops at the stairs and comes back for more. She smacks him in the face and they start all over again! Is that love or is it addiction?

MYE: Fun for a little while, hard to maintain.

RP: Yeah. Fun for a little while. As an alcoholic, you can’t be more on the nose. You wake up at seven a.m. and start drinking because you want to go back to bed. So how long does it take to get drunk enough to be able to go back to sleep? I’d start drinking at seven and be drunk by nine. I’d start making phone calls at ten. I’d try and pass off I wasn’t drunk and be hung over by the afternoon. That’s alcoholism. That’s what I did. Trying to maintain that productivity…that’s why records took four years between records and why there are only a few between ANTHEMS and this one. When I started doing Filter after Army Of Anyone I reached out and have been working my ass off to get my fan base back and let them know I am hear. I want to give them great music. It’s taken me a long time to get back here and do this. We’re still not there yet. I have to go to Europe. I have to go to Australia. Thank God we have amazing labels like Nuclear Blast and Riot out there. I need to get on radio, really fucking bust my ass.

MYE: That’s already a victory in itself, man…that you’re back out there now. It means a lot to people. We’re so happy you’re doing this.

RP: Yeah, and I’m there for you all. This is the big make-up record. I’ve been away but here I am! I’ve got the goods and some amazing shows. The show at the Roxy, people were saying that was THE show of the Sunset Music Festival. Literally people were stunned and energized. My brother is a huge fan and he was actually in the audience. I said,”Robert! You gonna start a fuckin’ moshpit or what?” And Robert did! He’s in his mid 50’s. He’s like,”alright you fuckin’ pusssiiieees!!!”

MYE: (cracking up)

RP: (laughing) It was a big circle pit. I calmed it down for “I’m Not The Only One” and then I was like “Alright, Terminator! Get back in there.” That’s the thing, at the end of the day he’s my brother. We kid around,”Hey Terminator, why don’t you start a fuckin’ mosh pit.” People might say that’s silly but we’ve been through a lot. At the end of the day for a guy to make it as an actor and me to make it as a singer and end up where we’re at…it’s just about rock n’ roll.

MYE: I wouldn’t mosh with him. I’d be scared he’d stick a knife finger in my eye.

RP: People were taking his picture during the pit and then when he was walking out with them. He’s like,”I’m going outside to smoke a cigar!” People went out and smoked with him and took pictures with him and couldn’t believe it. Richard Patrick’s show with Terminator in the mosh pit. It was insane. I was like,”Jesus Christ!” Rob started the mosh and was there and we played the song “Under”. It was so cool.

MYE: Thanks man, I really appreciate your time.

RP: Thanks, man. We’ll talk soon.

MYE: Be well.