TheAlterBridgeNation.com

erau wrote:My dream tour this year would have been a combined Creed + Alter Bridge 20-year Human Clay playthrough + 15-year One Day Remains playthrough. They could have alternated "opening" and "closing" bands.

I would have traveled anywhere on the planet to see that.

Well, there's always 2024 for a 25-year + 20-year.

I also would love to see a alter bridge and creed co-tour

Well, not such a Creed-fan myself.
Just a collecting-freak beceause them just beiing AB-related (for me).
You diehard-Creed-fans already probably know this, but for those who missed out on the limited vinyl issue of Human Clay in the old days and don't want to pay loads of money for it on Ebay : re-issue coming up next month.

riemslag1 wrote:Well, not such a Creed-fan myself.
Just a collecting-freak beceause them just beiing AB-related (for me).
You diehard-Creed-fans already probably know this, but for those who missed out on the limited vinyl issue of Human Clay in the old days and don't want to pay loads of money for it on Ebay : re-issue coming up next month.

I did not know that, thank you. I'm glad they're doing SOMETHING for Human Clay's anniversary other than the fleeting comments from Mark about how he feels like he was a toddler crawling on the floor whilst teething when HC came out.

I'm sure it's not meant this way, but it always sounds derogatory to me when Mark talks about how child-like of a player/song-writer he was 20 years ago. As far as I'm concerned, he wrote the best music he's every written then. If the Blackbird/Fortress enthusiasts caught wind of this, I'm sure they'd parachute in with grenade launchers - both are great/good albums, respectively, but not MT's best work.

I'll be so bold as to go on and say Human Clay is the greatest album of all time. Never had I heard an album so cohesive, melodic, and dynamic all at the same time. Right after it released, my older brother bought it and let me listen to it on his diskman. I was 9 - so I'm sure I'm biased.

Mark thinks in terms of technique and complexity now in songwriting. That's why FC didn't sound very creed like.

Troops4Tremonti wrote:

riemslag1 wrote:Well, not such a Creed-fan myself.
Just a collecting-freak beceause them just beiing AB-related (for me).
You diehard-Creed-fans already probably know this, but for those who missed out on the limited vinyl issue of Human Clay in the old days and don't want to pay loads of money for it on Ebay : re-issue coming up next month.

I did not know that, thank you. I'm glad they're doing SOMETHING for Human Clay's anniversary other than the fleeting comments from Mark about how he feels like he was a toddler crawling on the floor whilst teething when HC came out.

I'm sure it's not meant this way, but it always sounds derogatory to me when Mark talks about how child-like of a player/song-writer he was 20 years ago. As far as I'm concerned, he wrote the best music he's every written then. If the Blackbird/Fortress enthusiasts caught wind of this, I'm sure they'd parachute in with grenade launchers - both are great/good albums, respectively, but not MT's best work.

I'll be so bold as to go on and say Human Clay is the greatest album of all time. Never had I heard an album so cohesive, melodic, and dynamic all at the same time. Right after it released, my older brother bought it and let me listen to it on his diskman. I was 9 - so I'm sure I'm biased.

Yeah, saying "I think I was a baby boy when that album came out"everytime something about a Creed album is asked sounds very poor and ungrateful to me.

Actually I do prefer the "simplicity" and sound/tone of some of his previous work than the "complex" and overproduced stuff he's been releasing over the last few years. And that includes Creed and the first steps of Alter Bridge.

Come on. You guys are really taking Mark's "I was a young boy when we released My Own Prison and Human Clay" comments really way too harshly than it should be. He also stated "I wouldn't be here right now if it weren't for those three records that we did with Creed," so don't give me that notion that him, of all people, looks "ungrateful" for making a comment like that.

As for what's the best work for Mark? I honestly don't know. I can honestly say he has never made a bad album before in all the bands he's a part of and there's a lot of things to love in those albums over the years from My Own Prison/Human Clay to Blackbird to All I Was to Fortress to A Dying Machine and hopefully more onwards. I wouldn't want to say that he's a worst musician now than he was 20 years ago. There are some tradeoffs to his approach in guitar-playing and songwriting then to the now and it comes with benefits and drawbacks. To me, as a guy that first heard the name and guitar playing of Mark Tremonti through AB, I can honestly see where he comes from when trying to listen to a Creed album. I've tried listening to Human Clay and My Own Prison and quite honestly, while they are well-crafted albums, I just don't enjoy them as much as AB or Tremonti and I honestly don't have much incentive to relistening to them. I can say the same thing for Myles with his stuff with Slash (the contrast is that Second Skin and Year of the Tiger which are great albums with great relistenable value for me).

I think when Mark makes these comments, he feels like he's a more refined player/songwriter now with decades of experience than back then as a guy that's more or less starting out with a few years of being a professional musician that caught that lightning in the bottle of success in a shorter range of time than expected.

Mark may be a better musician, but he's definitely not a better songwriter than he was 20 years ago.
He's lost his ear for good sounding guitar tones, and his "chug-chug" riffs are nowhere near as heavy as his open chord riffs from the Creed days and early AB stuff.
He used to write cohesive songs with peaks and valleys, and nowadays, everything he releases is insanely formulaic and (sadly) forgettable after a few months.
If we're talking about Human Clay, it feels like a band playing together, and even on the lesser-known tracks like Wrong Way, the way the guitar, bass and drums complement each other is unmatched in Mark's catalogue.

I think Mark has just forgotten how special Creed was, and he's so removed from that era of his career that he actually thinks they weren't that great in the first place.
Say what you want about Stapp, but he's never talked that way about Creed.

It's strange how the perspective can be different, because as much as I love Human Clay, I much prefer Mark's later guitar work, some riffs off Blackbird and ABIII are absolutely mint in my book. But I definitely agree that his songwriting in overall has become quite stale. We don't get much of the Blackbirds, Fortresses, New Way to Lives, Slip to the Voids and Cry of Achilleses these days.

chtimixeur wrote:Mark may be a better musician, but he's definitely not a better songwriter than he was 20 years ago.
He's lost his ear for good sounding guitar tones, and his "chug-chug" riffs are nowhere near as heavy as his open chord riffs from the Creed days and early AB stuff.
He used to write cohesive songs with peaks and valleys, and nowadays, everything he releases is insanely formulaic and (sadly) forgettable after a few months.
If we're talking about Human Clay, it feels like a band playing together, and even on the lesser-known tracks like Wrong Way, the way the guitar, bass and drums complement each other is unmatched in Mark's catalogue.

I think Mark has just forgotten how special Creed was, and he's so removed from that era of his career that he actually thinks they weren't that great in the first place.
Say what you want about Stapp, but he's never talked that way about Creed.

It really seems that his sense of "good music" is based on its complexity and it really sounds awful everytime he's asked about a Creed record because it's the same answer everytime a Creed album related-question is asked to him.

As a guitar player I can even understand him because of what he likes to play and what is fun to play but as a musician or a songwriter(which he claims to be his major musical skill) it doesn't pay a dime, music is not complexity, not about a high-speed riff

He's lost the touch on the guitar tone, specially the clean one and in my opinion most of his solo guitars are bad(not bad at all, but it sounds like an improvisation all the time).

As a humongous Creed fan first, and AB/Tremonti fan second, I'd like to chime in on this topic. I do think for a very long time Mark was embarrassed of Creed. Partly because of Stapp's behavior, and partly because of what a meme the band became. Much like Nickelback, people just hated Creed for the sake of hating them. Mark said in a really old interview, around the time Creed broke up, that he felt like he was constantly walking around with a target on his face. It doesn't help that you had dickheads from RollingStone, the internet, and Pearl Jam just ripping on the band for no reason.

However, unlike Nickelback, Creed was (is?) a legitimately talented band. Mark and Stapp, plus John Kurzweg made three of the most successful rock albums of all time. Even the most mainstream hits like With Arms Wide Open, Higher and My Sacrifice are, or are almost five minutes long and are well crafted songs unlike say Crazy Bitch, Get Stoned or Bad Girlfriend. Not to bash anyone's tastes, but unlike so many of their contemporaries Creed put a lot of work into those first three albums, and that's why they reached the peaks they did. While Mark clearly loves learning and expanding his sound, I do think as the years go by he's come to appreciate Creed's songwriting approach more than he did after the first break up. More Than This, Devil Inside You and the Nameless Ballad all sound just like classic Creed, he's playing their music more (Torn, With Arms Wide Open) and he revisited the shelved Creed V album and said he really liked it.

Creed and Fuel are parallel bands to me, and Carl Bell and Mark remind me a lot of each other. The biggest bridge being they are songwriters first, and guitarists second. Mark seems to be switching those roles as the years go on. The only albums Mark has made since moving away from his Creed sound that I absolutely love are Blackbird and Fortress. His solo work and the rest of Alter Bride I always support and do enjoy, but I miss his emphasis on songwriting and storytelling as opposed to the current focus on complexity and skill. He's a great person, an amazing musician, and one of rock's finest. But man, I'd give anything to get music like My Own Prison, Human Clay, Weathered and One Day Remains from him again. Much like I'd give anything for Carl Bell to continue making rock music in the vein of the first four Fuel albums. However, until that day comes I will always be grateful for the great music I do have from Mark, and the albums he continues to make.

Dolo wrote:It's strange how the perspective can be different, because as much as I love Human Clay, I much prefer Mark's later guitar work, some riffs off Blackbird and ABIII are absolutely mint in my book. But I definitely agree that his songwriting in overall has become quite stale. We don't get much of the Blackbirds, Fortresses, New Way to Lives, Slip to the Voids and Cry of Achilleses these days.

Hey, I like AB too, don't mistake me. There are songs I love on every AB album, even TLH, but there are also a lot more fillers and subpar material than on any Creed album IMHO.
Some riffs Mark wrote are badass, but you can easily waste a good riff in an average song if you build it with a formulaic structure in mind.
I strongly believe Mark released way too much music over the last 10 years. There was no need for him to record every single riff he ever wrote, it was a bad idea from the start.
And as I've said it many times, his whole Tremonti catalogue sounds like a blur to me: it feels to me like I'm hearing the same song over and over again, most of his thrash riffs are very similar and predictable, and when he tries to do epics with that band, they sound like a watered down version of AB's epics.

George wrote:It really seems that his sense of "good music" is based on its complexity
...
music is not complexity

I fully agree with this.
That's one of the reasons AB's recent singles don't work in an acoustic setting.
There's beauty in simplicity, and just because your song doesn't include a fast/banging riff or a legato solo doesn't mean it's more commercial.

Devil Inside You wrote:I do think for a very long time Mark was embarrassed of Creed.

I've also noticed that. His body language often says it all, and ever since AB became a band, I rarely saw pride on his face when Creed was mentioned.

Devil Inside You wrote:I do think as the years go by he's come to appreciate Creed's songwriting approach more than he did after the first break up. More Than This, Devil Inside You and the Nameless Ballad all sound just like classic Creed, he's playing their music more (Torn, With Arms Wide Open) and he revisited the shelved Creed V album and said he really liked it.

I'm not hearing any classic Creed on the new tunes they rehearsed in 2012. It was more moody, but that's about it: the songwriting was not in the same league as the first 3 Creed records. More Than This also sounded very formulaic, and almost like a parody of someone trying to write My Sacrifice 2.0.
I also remember that on one of Stapp's videos from Mark's house, Mark was playing something very thrashy on guitar which sounded NOTHING like Creed. If that's the kind of material he was aiming for on Creed, frankly, I have zero will to hear it.

Just because Mark has 13 songs intended for Creed V does not mean they're any good, and he shouldn't release them if they're not up to par with the first 3 records.
If they ever release another album, they should take their time with it, and write it as a duo, as they did in the old days. But for that, they would need to spend time together to reconnect as human beings (or dare I say friends), and I doubt Mark has any time for this to happen with AB and Tremonti taking so much time of his life.
Deep down, I think Creed is one of those bands that requires you to give it 100% of your time and attention. You can't half-ass things, or else everyone will notice.
The bottom line is: If you can't do it right, don't do it.

chtimixeur wrote: I strongly believe Mark released way too much music over the last 10 years. There was no need for him to record every single riff he ever wrote, it was a bad idea from the start.

Absolutely. It's been definitely getting the 'quantity over quality' vibe lately but this is what he has to do to maintain a living.

"I'm not hearing any classic Creed on the new tunes they rehearsed in 2012. It was more moody, but that's about it: the songwriting was not in the same league as the first 3 Creed records. More Than This also sounded very formulaic, and almost like a parody of someone trying to write My Sacrifice 2.0.
I also remember that on one of Stapp's videos from Mark's house, Mark was playing something very thrashy on guitar which sounded NOTHING like Creed. If that's the kind of material he was aiming for on Creed, frankly, I have zero will to hear it.

Just because Mark has 13 songs intended for Creed V does not mean they're any good, and he shouldn't release them if they're not up to par with the first 3 records.
If they ever release another album, they should take their time with it, and write it as a duo, as they did in the old days. But for that, they would need to spend time together to reconnect as human beings (or dare I say friends), and I doubt Mark has any time for this to happen with AB and Tremonti taking so much time of his life.
Deep down, I think Creed is one of those bands that requires you to give it 100% of your time and attention. You can't half-ass things, or else everyone will notice. "

Well, wouldn't you agree that these unfinished demos and snippets are an unfair assessment? Regarding that riff you mentioned, you could also argue that if you were to hear a few seconds of a song like Bullets it wouldn't sound like classic Creed. I will agree More Than This, the nameless ballad and Devil Inside You sound more like One Day Remains than anything from the first three albums but at this point I'll take it. Plus, I think Mark needs to warm up back to that style gradually. I guess we can elaborate on this in the future when Creed V comes out. Haha

I thought Devil inside you and More than this sounded a lot like weathered (album) to me. I pretty much agree with you guys. I like a lot of what mark has done since creed but not all of it. I think for a while he was embarrassed by it for a while but I don't think he is anymore. Remember that time sully erna of godsmack talked shit about creed at a concert, and this was before AB and Godsmack were about to tour together, and because of this Mark called off the tour. I think if he wasn't proud of creed in some way, he wouldn't have done that. Just my thoughts.

I think Creed will reunite next year, like I said before.

There goes your theory about a 2020 reunion.

Mark: When Wind-Up started it was perfect for me. The guy who started the label [the late Alan Meltzer] was passionate about music and put all his attention into getting this little band named Creed off the ground. We had all the label’s attention; they had a hungry staff and it all worked out. Like any label, however, they eventually thought they were going to have success with every band they put out. When Alter Bridge started, they wanted “Alter Creed.”

Interviewer: The label initially pushed Alter Bridge’s debut [2004’s One Day Remains].

Mark: The label loved the songs, but when the album didn’t sell a million copies, when it didn’t perform like a Creed record, the wind came out of their sails.

Interviewer: Now that singer Scott Stapp is healthy and musically active, do you see Creed reuniting for a tour in the future?

Mark: You never know. It is a matter of timing. The next few years, however, will be all about Alter Bridge.

source: https://www.theaquarian.com/2019/09/18/ ... the-limit/

chtimixeur wrote: The next few years, however, will be all about Alter Bridge.

So no half-assed Tremonti records and another AB record sooner than 2022?

If that statement from Mark means Myles will not play with Slash anytime soon, that's great news for AB.

ugh

chtimixeur wrote:If that statement from Mark means Myles will not play with Slash anytime soon, that's great news for AB.

As silly as it sounds having not even heard Walk The Sky yet, part of me hopes this will give Mark and Myles time to collaborate a bit more for the next record and have more time to let the ideas grow. Again, haven't even heard Walk the Sky, who knows, it might end up taking down Fortress as my favorite AB album!

Im a little sad that Creed may not put out another album any time soon, but a big part of me believes there will be at least one more tour from them. It would be nice to see Creed live before they all call it a day.

Thanks to joshuabeau for the translation of this French interview:
viewtopic.php?p=206510#p206510

Q: Finally, we recently spoke to Scott Stapp . He seems to have finally taken control of his problems of addiction and bipolarity; he is in a good state of mind today. He told us that both of you spoke not long ago and agreed that there was a lot of misunderstanding and that things are positive now. So, is there hope to see you again working in Creed?

Mark: You know, I said no years ago and we finally did a reformation. It just needs to be the right time and the right place. I wished him the best, I hope he ... I heard from everyone that he was fine. So much has happened ... I'm aware of a lot of things that have happened, of course, but when it comes to personal stuff, I know about as much as anyone; I learn this via social networks and in the news. That said, I actually spoke to him a few months ago, but we do not talk to each other often. He has released a new album, and I hope it works well for him. We never know. I am very busy right now with Alter Bridge. As soon as I'm halfway through this tour, I will write for Tremonti's next album to make sure it will be ready on time. Then we'll see what happens.