Anthems for the Damned (CD) by Filter

What genre could be more torn, more prone to identity crises, than "industrial pop?" Industrial music -- which has meant many things, but has always involved seriously gnarly sonic textures and a highly aggressive vibe -- pretty much came about to not be pop. It approached this on the fundamental level: the highly mechanized tones didn't even quite sound human, which pretty much ruled out the heartbreak ballad.

Or did it? Emerging in the early '90s, Trent Reznor's seminal Nine Inch Nails project drastically changed what "industrial" could mean while still playing within its rules. Songs like "Closer" and "Hurt" were at once full of red-blooded passion and spookily primal. And from there, the floodgates could open, and ex-NIN man Richard Patrick could branch out with Filter. The group's first disc, 1995's Short Bus, paired industrial rages with more pensive moments, and the hybrid came into full bloom on 1999's Title Of Record. Led by the spacious and melodic "Take A Picture," the record made "industrial pop" a phrase you could say out loud.

New disc Anthems For The Damned, the group's first studio effort since 2002, comes at a particularly weird -- read: particularly low -- time for mainstream rock music. The gross behemoth of "modern rock" was just taking over when "Take A Picture" appeared; popping up in 2008, Damned feels like a response to that scene's general irrelevance. It's less concerned with industrial pop's sweet/sour dichotomy, and more with finding a viable rock somewhere in the middle. A song like "Hatred Is Contagious" uses the hard, anti-empire language that Reznor so loves, but its hard sound is more meaty than metallic.

Damned's other big move, where fixing rock is concerned, comes in its subject matter. This musical generation's rebellion has been unusually soft -- mainly limited to loose platitudes about alienation. But an industrial group knows how to get properly fed up with modern society, and Filter deliver some stingers here. Acoustic-driven "Lie After Lie" is a deceptively pretty song that seems exhausted with deceptions both personal and system-wide. It might pack less punch coming from a different singer, but Patrick is a picture of elegant weariness throughout the record.

The really critical rebel act here, however, comes first. Lead track "Soldiers Of Misfortune" is a serious meditation about the Iraq war -- a topic many of Filter's peers have seemed scared to touch. The album is dedicated to a young Army Reservist who was killed on duty in 2004, and the song pulls no punches in describing "soldiers of misfortune, soldiers of distortion." It is also the strongest stretch of rock on the album, a gutsy spell of thick electric guitar and dreamy, soaring vocals. If the question coming in was whether Filter, after six years off, could come back with an album that mattered, it has been answered.

By Jake Blaine