Harry Crosby, also played bass. The cover of the album came from Mosimann's girlfriend, a dental assistant, who had spare X-ray photographs at hand. Composition and content Musically, Filth is a heavy album often noted by critics for its uncompromising noise and brutality; AllMusic's Ned Raggett described it as "angry-beyond-all-anger", and Sasha Geffen of Consequence of Sound called it the "ugliest, most brutal music possible". The sound of Filth is defined by the band's unusual composition: two bass players, two drummers (both of which have access to miscellaneous percussive items), and one guitarist all accompanied by a series of programmed tape loops. Though based in the then-dying genre of no wave, Kory Grow of Rolling Stone recognized Filth as "primal art rock at its most vitriolic" and as anticipatory of industrial music, sludge metal, and noise rock; Metal Hammer's Chris Chantler also recognized Filth and other early Swans material as integral to the development of sludge metal. Gene Armstrong of the Arizona Daily Star described Filth as "an industrial-strength brand of grinding dirge-rock". Some publications criticized the album for being, as Trouser Press put it, "squalor without catharsis", but many saw this unrelenting nature as captivating and unique. Filth presents its music as walls of noise, or "slabs of sound"; Gira would come up with simple bass chords and simply "slam" them repeatedly without much change, clanging rhythms of both traditional drums and more unusual instruments (like metal tables) were then built around that, resulting in a "roar" driven by overwhelming sound rather than a predetermined beat. The lyrics of Filth and its following albums deal with "violence, extreme sex, power, rage, and the margins of human depravity", according to AllMusic's Thom Jurek. The words, often delivered as shouts or misanthropic wails, focus on both social and personal decay in a directly bleak way. Gira described his vocals as "screaming/testifying", and Jake Cole of Spectrum Culture called them "locked into an endless loop of provocation, filled with unending allusions to violence, rot and rape". In a positive review of the album, Robert Christgau sardonically wrote, "lyrics are available to suckers on request". Despite the dismal, overwhelming nature of the music, some critics called the album occasionally danceable. Gira retrospectively recognized The Stooges and Throbbing Gristle as primary inspirations for Filth. Filth is relatively brief, lasting only thirty-seven minutes. It begins with "Stay Here", which instantly conveys the distorted aggression of