Filter are back with a new single, “Thoughts and Prayers”, their first song in four years. The track will appear on the band’s upcoming album, Murica, tentatively due before the end of the year.
Frontman Richard Patrick, the lone constant member of the veteran industrial rock act, reunited with original Filter guitarist Brian Liesegang to pen the new song. The pairing has given the track a throwback industrial feel, reminiscent of some of the band’s ’90s output.
Lyrically, the song is politically charged, with Patrick condemning empty gestures in the wake of events like school shootings. As he sings in the chorus, “Thoughts and prayers/ Post and shares/ I’m bleeding out of open wounds/ Another day that no one cares.”
Back in 2018, it was announced that Patrick and Liesegang had reunited, and had begun work on a sequel to the band’s debut LP, Short Bus. A crowdfunding campaign was launched on the now defunct PledgeMusic, and it appears that the project has been scrapped in favor of the new album, Murica. When it does arrive, the new LP will be the follow-up to 2016’s Crazy Eyes.
Patrick and Liesegang were apparently encouraged to reconcile their differences by Veruca Salt singer Louise Post, who told them to “bury any bullshit [and] forget the crap” while they were both attending the same show.
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Accompanying the new song are both an official music video and a lyric video. The music video was directed by Patrick, who called the clip “extremely blunt” and revealed that he “had to take some of the footage out.”
Check out the music video and lyric video for Filter’s “Thoughts and Prayers” below, followed by a late 2019 episode of Consequence of Sound’s “Kyle Meredith With …” podcast, in which Patrick discussed the 20th anniversary of Filter’s platinum-certified sophomore album, Title of Record.
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