*** Filter

TITLE OF RECORD

(Reprise)

One of the more openly bitter refugees from Lollapalooza-era Nine Inch Nails, singer/guitarist Richard Patrick got his revenge by turning Trent's techno-industrial complexity into a simpler if still electronically tweaked kind of heavy metal and scoring a huge hit with "Hey Man, Nice Shot," a song that helped spearhead the hard-rock resurgence of the late '90s. And if his success had some people calling Filter the Stone Temple Pilots of industrial, well, that only helped fuel the me-against-the-world bitterness that so inspires Patrick. But he wasn't really alone: he had a valuable ally in Filter's other half, programmer Brian Liesgang, the guy who put the downward spiral in Patrick's stairway to hell.

Unfortunately, when it came time to record a second album, Patrick's inner angry child managed to alienate Liesgang, and Title of Record suffers for his absence. It's still a commercially viable release, with more than enough turgid riffage, angst-ridden lyrics (i.e., "You think you're precious and I think you're shit" and "I am a guilty man/I can't believe the things I've done to you"), and pounding drums to pass the Ozzfest test and still get invited to the next Family Values reunion. But the occasional electronic touches -- the techno beats and squiggles of "It's Gonna Kill Me," for example -- sound like an afterthought. In other words, it's less techno and more metal, right down to a couple of embarrassing by-the-numbers acoustic ballads. Which should please critics even less than Short Bus and sustain Patrick's paranoia through at least another spin cycle.

-- Matt Ashare