Local Review: Filth Lords – Filth Lords

Filth Lords
Filth Lords

Self-Released
Street: 10.14.21
Filth Lords = The Damned + PUP

Filth Lords, a street-punk band from Salt Lake City, released their self-titled album earlier this fall. It’s 12 tracks of noisy, vibrant songs filled with epic guitar riffs. Filth Lords is a great record if you’re looking for something to wake you up better than black coffee ever could. It is aggressive and loud, with very few moments of quiet to be found. 

The opening title track deserves its own, separate mention—“Filth Lords” is the band’s personal anthem, a warning and a furious introduction to their music and themselves. It tells the story of their becoming, effectively mythologizing themselves. “Filth Lords / Straight from the Hive / A fucking disgrace / we’ll melt off your face,”the chorus screams. They’re proud to be from SLC and are not ashamed to proclaim their decrepitness and the fury found in their music. 

“Bloody Cistern,” “Rotten Mind; Meaty Heart” and “Oily Hands” are the most notable tracks on the record. “Bloody Cistern” begins with an almost 30-second instrumental before diving into aggressive, quickly-spoken lyrics. It sounds dirty, in that CBGB-punk way, in that “this song is best enjoyed in a mosh pit” way. “Rotten Mind; Meaty Heart” is the last single off of the record, released a week before the full record came out. It sings a tale of a lover who burned the narrator deeply, painting a haunting picture of a beautiful witch with red-painted lips, a heavy shawl draped around their neck as they crawl the darkened city for souls to steal. It’s not a typical story you’d expect from a punk song, one more familiar from heavy metal acts, and that’s why it stuck out to me—much like “Filth Lords” did. “Oily Hands” opens with my favorite guitar riff off the entire album and carries on throughout the song. It sounds so fresh, so bright. 

Filth Lords make the kind of music that begs for mosh pits and head-banging. It needs to be listened to loudly with full attention, perhaps twice, to truly take it in. Like whiskey, their self-titled record is not easily swallowed, but the burn is good. –Cherri Cheetah