Filter - Short Bus (1995)

   Both the founding members of Filter (Richard Patrick and Brian Liesegang) have worked with Trent Reznor, but since in Nine Inch Nails they didn't have any creative role, they have started to work together in their own band.
  Filter was musically influenced by the 2 most determining mainstream musical directions of the early '90s: industrial rock and grunge. For the first probably their past in Nine Inch Nails could be also found responsible. 16 Volt's second album was made by the same recipe, so it wasn't a so genuine thing that time. The interesting thing in their music (that also makes it different from other similar bands) is that even though it was a high quality production, it lacks passion and deep/serious approach. They may sound heavy sometimes, Mr. Patrick enjoys to shout too, but nothing else. There's no real emotional, intense, rebelling or aggressive breakthrough, they prefer to stay behind a line that they've never crossed. Somehow the disturbance that should be expected from a basically disturbed style is missing. It's partly because of grunge, cause it always preferred to keep stagnating in some powereless state all the time, and probably English rock bands (like Oasis or Blur) also had some influence on their music, since they are famous about playing so intense that almost makes them falling asleep even on the stage. That style and tone had a quite large audience, so it's not surprising that the band's debut was a great success. And they've showed a different aspect of the actually modern musical tendencies, that haven't been so widespread yet in the US that time.