The Fillmore Silver Spring hosted legendary Jerry Cantrell last Friday night; it was a hard rock party with a 1990s flavor. Cantrell is in the middle of his I Want Blood tour, in support of his latest album of the same name. Along for the ride on this tour is Filter, a fellow ’90s powerhouse.
The Fillmore was already quite full when Filter took the stage—many in the crowd were just as stoked to see this Ohio band as they were Cantrell. Hitting the rock scene in the early 1990s, Filter released their first album in ‘95, titled Short Bus. The band has cycled through many personnel changes since then; front man Richard Patrick remains the sole original member. No matter, though—the rest of the band (Jonathan Radtke, Bobby Miller, and Tosh Peterson), provided an energetic dynamic for the nearly 45-minute set, performed in smoke and near darkness. The crowd rocked out to songs including “You Walk Away,” “Welcome to the Fold,” and ’90s bangers, “Take A Picture” and “Hey Man Nice Shot.” Filter’s most recent release is The Algorithm (2023).
“Jerry! Jerry! Jerry!”
The mostly GenX crowd at the Fillmore had swelled by the time Alice in Chains frontman Jerry Cantrell took the stage at 9:15pm. They were anxious to see the legend and chanted and sang along for much of the night. Along with vocalist Greg Puciato and his backing band, Cantrell greeted the crowd and launched into “Psychotic Break,” from 2002’s Degradation Trip. What followed was a setlist that represented the scope of Cantrell’s career, including several very crowd-pleasing Alice in Chains tracks.
But it was I Want Blood that was the centerpiece; the set featured five songs from the album, said to have more of an Alice in Chains influence than other solo work. “Vilified” was performed early in the night; it weaves well with Cantrell’s AIC work. Much of the other solo work in the set was sourced from the southern rock/country tinged Brighten (2021), including “Atone” and “Had to Know.”
But it was the work from the Alice in Chains catalog that elicited the most enthusiastic responses from the crowd, who sang along and pounded the air with their fists. Decades on, Alice in Chains remain beloved, not just by all of us who were there in the ’90s, but to fans growing up later as well. The set was stacked with five classics and were saved mostly for the end of the night. “Rooster” closed out the night in Silver Spring. Other songs included “Would?,” “Down in a Hole,” and AIC deep cut, “Hate to Feel.”
The US leg of the I Want Blood tour meanders through the country into March. It wraps up where it all started back in the day, Seattle, Washington, on March 9.
FILTER
