Review Summary: A great rock effort that opens up in a plain amazing way, and then just plateaus into an army of ballads.
Creed was, like it or not, one of the most successful bands ever to grace the planet. They sold more than 30 million units around the world, and whether or not Creed was a particularly talented band, is a pretty darn impressive achievement. But with great success comes great failure; Scott Stapp being a particularly great failure. His voice diminished everything it touched, and he sounded like a broke man’s Eddie Vedder. The fanbase was also a huge negative for the band, because if they had stayed together as a band for just a few more years, they were bound to lose fame within that short period, as the listeners mostly consisted of twelve or thirteen year-olds. One last big failure was the songwriting; the band was pretty talented after all. In fact, Creed was much more than a lot of the post grunge piers at the moment, but no one would know that from just Creed’s songs, because they were for the most part, generic and simplistic. This is where Alter Bridge comes in. Alter Bridge is the band that took just about everything good about Creed; the large fan base, the catchy chorus’s, and the talent, and not only explifies these to the extremes, but also manages to get rid of the biggest flaw, Scott Stapp, and managed to replace him with the more than capable Myles Kennedy.
Despite all this positive change, there was still boats load wrong with this new band Alter Bridge, it was just too similar to much of the modern hard rock. Sure, the riffs were improved, and yeah, there were more songs, but these songs were way too similar to that most of the songs of either Creed or Hard Rock bands. This was a major problem that needed a fixing, and with
Blackbird, nearly all of these problems were fixed, Alter Bridge mixed their sound with a breed of Heavy Metal, and thus creating an entirely more unique sound. It seems the band couldn’t go wrong now, but alas, while
Blackbird is a great, even at times amazing, album, it simply has too much filler material and is too long to be considered anything but a pretty good hard rock album.
Blackbird starts off in a rather excellent fashion with “Tie That Bind”, a dark and fierce metal song, with one of the most guitar-extravagant chorus’s known to man. Yes it’s true, the songwriting has finally gone to the way of guitarist Mark Tremonti, and for the most part, he creates some rather excellently done riffs and some rather solo-esqe guitar fills at times. His guitar work mostly ranges to all right to downright brilliant. Among the more impressive works on
Blackbird is the grooving Pantera-inspired riffing in verses “Buried Alive” which less-than-subtly switches to silence for a vocal pre-chorus from Myles Kennedy. The opening four tracks in particular, have rather skillful heavy metal/hard rock riffs, and solos that mix pure guitar technique with emotions that are moving throughout the rest of the song, making for solos that actually pack a punch. Even the drummer and bassist, Scott Phillips and Brian Marshall respectively, make for an enjoyable performance. Alone, neither impress the listener, but with the proper head phones, you can hear how well the work as a rhythm section. Everything hits where it needs to, every groove, every fill, everything falls into place like a puzzle.
But the unfortunate thing about this record is that the puzzle is never completely fixed. One problem with that puzzle is, surprisingly enough, Myles Kennedy. He’s a great vocalist, he boasts more power than many vocalists dream vocalists. He could sound like god in vocal form for all I care, he still messes up the album in a way because the band seems to want to center themselves around his wonderful voice. Just about a majority of the album is ballads, which is rather upsetting, because Alter Bridge/Creed really shine on heavy songs like “Ties That Bind” or “Buried Alive”. Ultimately, this really isn’t that much of a bad thing, in fact, at times it can be a good thing, but it’s just too disappointing to hear only ‘good’ ballads when I can get awesome heavy songs at the snap of my thumbs. The best example of how disappointing ballads can is right smack daddy in the middle of the album with “Blackbird” and “One By One”. “Blackbird” is a nice slow ballad, Myles Kennedy’s voice is absolutely epic, and bassist Brian Marshall gets a really chance to shine during the bridge, but “One By One” absolutely slaughters the track from second one with some of the best riffing that Mark Tremonti has ever brought out, starting things out with a rather sludgely introduction riff, and then transcending into a technically fluid-sounding verse riff that fits Myles’s tone of voice for the song perfectly.
Creed/Alter Bridge thought that Myles Kennedy was the final piece of the puzzle of being a respectably excellent band, but he was in fact just another piece of a different puzzle that got mixed into the set. It’s disappointing a lot of the time, but really Alter Bridge should be proud of this effort, it’s the best thing that the band has ever put out, and with Myles Kennedy, probably the best thing they will ever put out. The effort is great in technicality, and songwriting for the most part, but the band ruins it when their ballads fail to match the quality of the other songs on the album, when the band merely wanted to show off their fantastic vocalist. Ultimately, I bashed this record to much for one silly error, it’s one of the best rock efforts I heard all of 2007, and while that may not be the biggest compliment due to the lack of good rock release that year, it is still quite the accomplishment for a band that was once thought for being one of the worst in the world. The thing that Alter Bridge deserve most is a pat on the back, they really earned it with this one.
3.6 out of 5
