As the founding guitarist of Seattle-based punk group Filth is Eternal, Brian McClelland has been diming up max-impact chord crustiness across the band’s catalog, most recently for their third LP, Impossible World.
He’s also launching his second boutique stompbox, a tone-intensifying five-band EQ dubbed the FILTH EQ+ pedal, which both he and Fall Out Boy guitarist Joe Trohman are juicing on the new album’s furiously d-beating So Below.
It all conjures the vibe of the sweat-and-mildew subterranean spaces they frequent around the Emerald City – the urban decay of its graffiti-splattered landscape has become a thrilling source of inspiration.
“We talk about how life is dirty,” McClelland says. “We want to have a sound that represents the scuzz and the grit we live with.”
Earlier in his career he performed in a more progressively-twisted heavy band called He Whose Ox Is Gored, where he experimented with reverbs and delays. FIE is a more for-the-throat venture, McClelland pushing Motörhead-and-Discharge driven riffs through biting Seymour-Duncan JB-loaded offsets and his Mesa Boogie Mark V.
Eventually, the tone-chaser dirtied things up further with the secret fuzz of a vintage Radio Shack reverb unit.
“When I was a kid my dad took me to Radio Shack and I’d get all these random pieces of audio gear and learn about how to set up a stereo system,” he explains.
“We realized around the recording of our 2021 album, Love is Alive, Filth is Eternal, that we had this random Radio Shack Realistic Stereo Electronic Reverb. It had quarter-inch inputs, but you could run it on a microphone impedance. When you plugged in a guitar it would overdrive like crazy – it was incredible! We started running those into 100-watt amps and it had this really colorful analog sound.”
Inspired by that tonal ferocity, McClelland (also a digital products specialist at Roland) reached out to Jeffrey Ollar of Lemon Sundrop Electronics about modernizing the Realistic circuit. Together they produced a small batch of Filth Eternal Echo Drive pedals, specializing in meaty slapbacks and punishing fuzz. One remains on McClelland’s pedalboard, while he sold the others on tour from the merch table.
For Impossible World, the pair re-teamed to develop the FILTH EQ+, an equalizer McClelland is now using alongside his signature Echo Drive to yield an increasingly sickening, scuzz-saturated tone.
“I talk to a lot of people about wanting either a little bit of analog saturation or a lot,” he says. “What's cool about the EQ is you can shape it to your sound. If you want a more aggressive, treble-forward kind of boosted sound, you can do that. If you're in a doom band you can crank it 60Hz and get real low and heavy. Or you can tighten it up and do the V-shape EQ.”
McClelland and co-guitarist Colin Jenkins are pushing those in-house designs via triplet-judding brutality on Bad Faith, unhinged feedback and grunge-punking hooks on Long Way, and Jenkins’ incendiary soloing on Hellfire.
Fall Out Boy’s Trohman is a surprise guest. FIE met him online: “He reposted our last album, Find Out, and said, ‘Here's a cool record from a Seattle band.’” McClelland recalls. “We reached out and said, ‘Hey man, love your work!’ We started a conversation and he said, ‘I'd love to come shred with you!’”
McClelland sent him their blistering track So Below and Trohman agreed to hop on, as long as he could dial into the wild tone he was hearing – which is how he ended up with his own FILTH EQ+. McClelland deleted his solo on the song to let his guest get filthy through a bend-manic finale.
While McClelland’s tone is only getting scuzzier, songs like Stay Melted find vocalist Lis D’Angelo exploring a more tunefully raspy singing style than in the past. Baroness guitarist Gina Gleason – FIE tourmate in 2024 – brings sublime vocal harmonies to the punky, speedy Desire. That contrast displays how the band’s sound is getting both meaner and more melodic.
“We can riff all day and we can play fast, but you need those earworms,” McClelland says. “We've been playing warehouses, crazy party bars, and basements forever. But you still want to have something catchy to give people and watch them sing along. It’s cool to see that all meld into a new style.”
- Impossible World is out now. Head to Filth Is Eternal’s website for details.
