Alter Bridge – Alter Bridge
Alter Bridge – Alter Bridge
Napalm Records
Release Date: 09/01/2026
Review by Jon Deaux
6.5/10
As a witness to many many rock groups spewing out the same old crap with each new album (if you think this is you, you’re right. Grow a pair and evolve or die). With the coming of the new self-titled (after 22 years, we’re out of ideas for album titles) eighth and new album Alter Bridge brings essentially the core change found in a quarterly stock file on Wall Street. In so many ways, same office, same secretary, same ceiling-lit hum buzzing at a wavelength capable of anaesthetising you to the point of numbing to the point of numbing, to the point where you’re sensing the pleasures of existence. In the act of consistency lies the real strength found in the form of hard rock music; sitting with your feet on the clock every day with your box of muffled chords and your meaty and sky-reaching sings an actualization that these guys think just happens.
Alter Bridge has been and always will be Creed minus Scott Stapp. That’s the recipe. Three-quarters of Creed have been hanging out with Myles Kennedy for all these years with only one thing in mind: to prove to the world that everything that was wrong with Creed had been Scott Stapp.
Myles Kennedy is clearly the superior and technical vocalist in the same way that a Honda Accord is superior to a Yugo. But this is the part that is difficult to report: the music is the same. Same guitar licks by Tremonti. Same Marshall bass lines. Same drum patterns by Phillips. Just the megalomaniac hair band bash-playing-festival spiritual tormented Scott Stapp has been swapped out for the PR-approved alternative.
It kicks off with a track accurately titled ‘Silent Divide’ and Kennedy sings about his anger and blind spot to a level of introspection that is simply not going to be available to any mere mortal. You could swap out Stapp in favor of Eddie Vedder, per se, and other than obligatory credulous wailage by Eddie Vedder, it might as well be a Creed record.
The hooks soar in that way that these guys have accomplished in over two decades, BAM! And back into the chug rhythm like a boom-ba-boom fighter jet with separation issues. It’s amazing not only because of that, but also because of the reason for that—that is, professional, and that’s all, and exactly what the music of Creed in the year 2026 would be if the name Scott Stapp wasn’t involved in a study about warning signs in today’s music industry.
‘Rue the Day’ gets rolling, involving about the first forty percent or so of each Alter Bridge or Creed CD. The requisite chunka-chunka metal pounds, which have been circulating through the system since the Clintons were in the White House, come first, followed by the Kennedy vocals, which always manage to pin the singer right on the precipice of some kind of holy truth/nerve crisis (which, presumably, is about as non-poisoned with testosterone as Stapp himself can manage to be).
The lack of this specificity in the instance of emotions has been labelled as universal truth, defined as being vague enough that literally anyone can project their own message into it, or as could also be said, this was the formula that the band Creed used in selling millions of units to the fan base that was yearning for some metal licks to be filled with spiritual themes without necessarily taking up a ‘religious’ position.
‘Power Down’ presses very aggressively in its examination of competence, where Creed correlation is truly ridiculous in an existentially silly manner in that ‘Power Down’ itself is the shut down in that it would be a commentary on the machine, but the reality of it becomes the hum of the machine running at its most optimal. Of course, that would be the same machine in “Weathered” except now optimally lubricated and not burdened by the camp of Embarrassment.
‘Playing Aces’ aims high on the landing of a plate full of ‘aggressive riffaging’ and ‘gambling” lyrics in the chorus. For what looks like the most hazardous statement the band has made, it would also prove the most hazardous in proving this album by playing it in drop C as opposed to drop D because the hazardous statement itself has no doubt that it has already overcome the most hazardous part in proving that Alter Bridge is still Creed because it does not have Scott Stapp in its line-up, in saying anything related to poker in songs would have been ‘edgy’ and ‘bros can relate’ for this crop of guys, who filled the arenas with beers in hand two generations ago.
But again, this is by no means a diss on Alter Creed, as obviously these guys realize what in the hell is what is happening. Two months is all it has taken in Eddie Van Halen’s renowned 5150 studio in California and record lair in Florida for Mickel “Elvis” Baskette to exact precisely what one would expect and nothing less than good and very good for the most part hard rock that is right on target for as much money that a private plane ride in a well-tuned machine from 2004, which mind you is precisely the original model from 1997 that indeed found in the grunge movement a moment that is precisely as played out in fact that found Fred Durst sucking all of the oxygen from it in a manner that is unnecessarily locutions, and that in fact a scheme that falls precisely somewhere in between would indeed be what is best in a manner that is proselytizing?
‘Trust In Me’ is a track where Kennedy and Tremonti take turns singing in a vocal tag-team fashion that is just so smooth, so effortless, you can just ignore it is there in the first place, with two exceptions, these being the service it lends to the illusions of their diversity in a band that unquestionably has scoured every track on this album for every last ounce of focus group approval, where—in effect—youngbloods wanting more than a little oomph, but not so much as to challenge, just enough to seem “edgy” in a post-”Human Clay” world where those same dads who wore out their “Human Clay” tapes in high school are trying to stand out in Alter Bridge, who are simply more authentic, who will never deliberately try to embarrass you to prove themselves heard on this kind of crap.
The delivery of the chorus, as done by Mark, is of this gruff, workmanlike quality, as if the guy is shrugging his shoulders and telling the listener, “He’s been reading all these self-help books about Perseverance and Grit, the same thing Stapp was warbling a year ago, but without the delusional swagger.” The verses are sung with this sincere, detached-quality as if the guy, Myles, is unsure of what exactly it is that he wants to say.
But then they follow that up with ‘Tested And Able’ (reportedly features one of the heaviest intros the band has yet put together)– Mark will sing the verse, Myles will sing the chorus – and this is the gimmick to the reinvention of the wheel in that they will alternate who sings in the verses and the choruses of the other bands. “Hey, you know what would shake things up in the Creed formula? They should switch off the verse and wail the choruses! Listen to any other band ever. Ever.”
‘What Lies Within’ is simply another possible song title for Alter Bridge/Creed, which could readily adorn the cover of a self-help book. After all, ‘Hang By A Thread’ is obviously the one which shall soon establish itself as the crowd-pleaser simply for including couched references to what would have constituted several of their big hits. This, in other words, shall include the sounds which the fans enjoy, finally taking on the same airs as the tracks which they enjoyed in Creed, until it got old to be liking Creed. This is due in large part to the mistake concerning the feedback loop, as well as an entire career consisting in changing their old sound for their current sound, which is simply taking the same song and rewriting it.
However, the piece of the Alter Bridge project that I always think is a suck factor is: the whole point of the Alter Bridge project was to give these guys the chance to move their art in a positive way. Guys that had Alter Bridge dropped into their lap because some guy was an embarrassment that they had to make a statement to the world to prove them wrong and to tell them that these guys were real artists that deserved to be heard and recognized as such because they couldn’t be bothered with the nightmare that was the musical group that was Creed; they were a bad nightmare that was a terrible mistake that these guys could only resort to for one reason and one reason alone—that they needed the cash to make ends meet until they could get back to doing the thing they loved, and now they find themselves twenty years later with eight records under the new incarnation with the new vocal talent that isn’t in enough mug shots to be worth adding to the roll, doing basically the same thing that they were doing before with a slightly different name attached to it.
Then we have: ‘Scales Are Falling’ with its clean, classic guitar bits—in a way like these bands heard Metallica, then heard classical music, and we’re like, “Hey, we think we can do the same thing in this same kind of way, like Creed would do quiet/loud/quiet—but we’re saying, oh, we’re so deep in this place.” Kennedy begins to spin a tale of darkness there. Like in a corporate office building in which it’s 7 PM, and you’re the only guy left in the office thinking this might be what two decades of separation from Scott Stapp sound like.
This hypnotic harmony that’s discussed in promotion of this album, however, is about as exciting as live concert painting actually drying, as far as I’m concerned.
‘What Are You Waiting For’ comes late on; it is the coworker who shows up for the meeting but remembers “as I mentioned earlier” things which had never been mentioned. It is here. It is real. It is alive. It can be another deeply meaningful song from Full Circle. It would mean nothing.
But in a sense, I suppose it is not until we reach this “slave to Master” that we remember that this project exists in a perfect vacuum. A world left in 2004. “Creed” simply a distant memory. Because this project is comprised of the final three-quarters of “Creed.” The elephant in the room that nobody wants to talk about.
As it swells. Kennedy screams the rafters in a way that Stapp never could. And a tip of the hat to said rafters in said halls. For a crowd that was there all those years ago.
As far as the playing goes, the guitar work of the aforementioned Tremonti and Kennedy is nothing short of incredible. It’s finished, and now you are left, blown through some sort of witness protection off stint, different guy, same guy, same chance of not being discovered. Alter Beers is a group that knows what it is doing. Kennedy has the talent to sing circles around Stapp. Tremonti has the talent to solo the strings like the best of them. But the rhythm team of Marshal and Phillips plods on like clockwork to the Swiss Rail timetable.
Then, about the fourth or fifth record before that, they started what could only be described as high concept for the confusion over Scott Stapp’s presence, which has been misconstrued for what it says about progress as a band. The truth about the situation is that more than fifty million records have been sold to Creed, a band that does what Alter Bridge does, which is to put out inspirationally generic post-grunge rock riddled with epic licks, epic choruses, and a pretense towards profundity, with nothing actually said.
Of course, the relevance of the similarity in style being what Alter Bridge does now is because Myles Kennedy does not elicit the disdainful laughter Stapp has elicited with pretentiousness in the past, which could be great marketing but poor taste in terms of musical quality. What reasons would there be in wanting the response of Alter Bridge reaching the level of commercial success of the Creed band, when Alter Bridge is in fact, the “better” of the two in all possible ways? Because Alter Bridge plays it safe.
They borrowed the formula from Creed and subtracted from it the most juvenile aspects of it, namely the Messiah complexes that Stapp is so fond of slinging around in “Messiahs,” and chose instead to follow Kennedy’s astoundingly prescient notion of “passion.”
They toned down the glitter, left the formula alone, and took the credit for it. The integrity of it all is not the problem; the integrity that goes with the good PR of having something better than they do. The problem is that there is still the most damned hell of it all to say that it is not terrible music. At least there is something there that a man could be properly outraged about.
This self-titled release is sonically competent, affectively aseptically sealed, officially approved for public dissemination to suburban dad-rockers who continue to believe that wallet chains remain a viable alternative in Hard Metal, hence necessitating a musical accompaniment soundtrack to musicalize the commute in the Volvo to D.I.Y. Store.
A dozen new songs of music exactly like all the old songs, and exactly like Creed’s music, which they have been attempting to move past for twenty-two years.
TRACKLISTING:
01 Silent Divide
02 Rue The Day
03 Power Down
04 Trust In Me
05 Disregarded
06 Tested and Able
07 What Lies Within
08 Hang By A Thread
09 Scales Are Falling
10 Playing Aces
11 What Are You Waiting For
12 Slave To Master
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