I’ve been pretty ride-or-die for Filth is Eternal ever since their first LP under the name Fucked and Bound – how could you not with a name like that? I even WFA‘d them back then, but you can’t find it now because of reasons. Suffice it all to say the band rips and they’re wonderful people – they’re an easy project to get on the side of and enjoy, especially if you’re down with D-beat punk that punches through your chest like an old school kung fu movie.
The band have only grown more with time – 2021’s Love is a Lie, Filth is Eternal was a solid entry for the band as they transitioned into a broader (and more SEO-friendly) version of themselves, but it ultimately didn’t have the immediacy or staying power that their debut Suffrage had. With Find Out though, they may have found a nice middle ground while still growing even more stylistically.
Find Out is the band’s longest album yet, though given the genre that’s not saying a whole lot. 28 minutes is still pretty short by general standards, but that’s over 50% longer than their last album. How does it all pan out then? More time means more opportunities to miss – or hit; it means more risk of meandering – or room to experiment. I think what makes Find Out stand out the most among the band’s growing repertoire is its willingness to commit to different stuff. D-beat’s still here, punk attitude is around every corner, but now there’s touches of grunge (they’re from Seattle after all, it’s basically innate) and more as they distill their lives into their music.
Lis Di Angelo’s vocals are stronger than ever, skating effortlessly between something like a more pissed off Kim Gordon (which makes sense given the band’s truncated cover of Sonic Youth‘s “Kool Thing“), Neil Fallon (Clutch), or even prime Metallica-era James Hetfield with how they enunciate their yells. If you’re keen to the interests and doings of members, you’ll see a song like “Roll Critical” coming a mile away, a song that references aspects and mechanics of tabletop games to build a track about persevering and overcoming, clearly born of Lis’ love of Dungeons & Dragons. It’s surprisingly upbeat and encouraging for Filth is Eternal, but a great fit in an album steeped in more negative aspects of life.
“Crawl Space” for instance has positive aspects with Lis bellowing about having a crawl space of good times; a respite against the dick-kicking that is wayward mental health, fluctuating relationships, maybe a volatile job that reminds you you can be evicted from your crawl space at any time. The guitar solo from Brian McClelland here is alluring and a shining moment on both the album and band’s work as a whole. If I had to point to one (1) hard guitar moment on Find Out though, it’s definitely gotta be “Pressure Me” which has what is probably the hardest riff on the album. As a result, the song has this mid-tempo thrashiness to it, primed and armed to set pits the fuck off for barely more than 90 seconds. The splashy, cymbal-heavy drums from Emily Salisbury really shine here as well. “All Mother” has similar affectations, but utilizes their classic D-beat sound more to hit harder – I absolutely love the final vocal refrain on the track, ‘All Mother, catch the body/All others, catch the name‘. It’s a sonic gangbang of a track
While there’s a lot of heart on Find Out, it’s most felt on songs like “Signal Decay”, an examination of a crumbling relationship stacked with clean vocals from Lis and thick, textured instrumentation that reminds me of Cave In. There’s also some lighter touches on “The Gate” where the instrumentation has that grungy feel I was referring to earlier along with a clean hook that brings it all together making a song that celebrates breaking the chains that hold you back in life.
You just get everything you expect here as a Filth is Eternal fan, but dialed in a bit harder. They really took the last couple years to think, refine, and execute what could be their best album yet. Things are more varied and purposeful, yet unified. The poetic aspects of the lyrics are here, as relatable as they are searing; guitars slice the air in each song with ease, and the drums are fiercely competent across an impressive number of modalities and tempos that this album required, which is many.
For as much as I love Filth is Eternal‘s early years, it feels like Find Out marks a true maturation past those former limits while still employing that early D-beat sound to get its point across when necessary. It’s less an unbreakable tenet for the band and more an employable tool, like a set of brass knuckles they can put on at any point. Shit, they don’t even have to hit you with them either, the presence is likely enough to set the tone just as they do on stage when they perform. Find Out is great, and could be named as such as a premonition of sorts to listeners that we will find out what they’re capable of with this album.
