Tuesday, February 8, 2011

CREED MANAGED ONE LAST BREATH BEFORE CALLING IT A DAY




It`s getting late here so I haven`t got time to invest 1000 words and two hours of my time to writing a blog, unlike what so many
people think I still have a job and I have to get out of bed really early to do it. 

But I got enough time for a cup of tea and a choc chip cookie, so I thought I would quickly put in a good word for a song from well known and recently reformed US post-grunge band Creed. 

Creed have always had an army of critics bagging them despite reaching the stratosphere of commercial success with the three albums they released in the late 90`s and early 2000`s.

The first one, `My Own Prison`, despite being labelled by many grunge purists as being Pearl Jam plagiarism, is truly one of the best rock albums of the 90`s hands down. 

Lead vocalist Scott Stapp has a naturally similar voice to that of Eddie Vedder from Pearl Jam, but in Stapp`s defence, I have never thought he is deliberately taking off Vedder. 

The fact is that Stapp may have a deep and croaky voice like Vedder, but it is better and more powerful by a mile, albeit very distinctive and occasionally a little irritating. 

But his passion was always there. I will post a review of `My Own Prison` and the mega-
successful 'Human Clay' another time, but the third installment from the band `Weathered`, minus the original bassist Brian Marshall and now as a studio 3-piece, has a truly remarkable grunge-metal power ballad on it called `One Last Breath`, which at the time could have been a bit of a self observation by Stapp of the tension in Creed
which resulted in the band breaking up in 2004. 

Guitarist Mark Tremonti had already layed down some killer riffs on Creed`s first two albums, but now he had to fill the bassist breach as well in the absence of the now departed Brian Marshall. 

Scott Philips is the band`s sturdy drummer. Creed have always been seen to be a bit of a born again christian band, certainly there is a lot of religious metaphors in Stapp`s lyrics, but as Tremonti has always been only too keen to point out there is a big difference between spirituality and religion. 

Creed he believes is not a christian rock band, it`s a rock band which has a lot of spiritual themes. 

Whatever Creed is, they are a very successful band, they recently reformed and made a new album called `Full Circle`, which I admit I haven`t listened to yet, the years between 2004 and 2009 saw a new band form from the ashes of Creed minus the singer Scott Stapp, called Alter Bridge, which sound wise had a lot of similarities to Creed, and a rather fruitless solo career from the Creed-less Stapp.

As I was getting to earlier, the song `One Last Breath`, off the album `Weathered`, is a masterpiece of post grunge rock which had a totally way out there video clip to go with it. 

The lyrics of the song paint a story of someone who is suicidal and feels that `six feet ain't so far down`. The power vocal
chorus to the song, which is sung by Stapp with heartfelt intensity, is unnerving but inspirational all in one.

And not forgetting team Tremonti/Philips who provided the metallic rhythm to the song, it really is one of the best pieces of air guitar in the history of hard rock.

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