Filter - Short Bus

6.0 - USA - 1995

Debut album from the industrial music project fronted by former Nine Inch Nails guitarist and brother to the T-1000, Richard Patrick. Lead single and first track, "Hey Man, Nice Shot" -- a tribute to the suicide of R. Budd Dwyer -- was a big hit and most certainly the soundtrack to innumerable rounds of DooM, which was also exploding in popularity around this time. The rest of the record is largely mid-nineties sub-NIN industrial slog. There's nothing overtly bad, but it all gets a little dull after a while. Still, if you like "Hey Man, Nice Shot", there are at least half a dozen tracks here that a basically just different versions of that track, although it's a little like that scene in Alien: Resurrection where Ripley finds the room of failed Ripley clones. Elsewhere, the most notable track (and not necessarily in a good way) is "Stuck In Here" in which the group depart from their usual fuzz-toned "heavy" riffs to produce a strangely prosaic acoustic indie-song that sounds like something Hayden might have cooked up on a slow day, with Patrick's erstwhile expressive scream muted into a rather flat and not particularly great "sensitive" vocal. Meh.