 "Creed rocks!!!!!!!" | 2009-10-28 |
| - Reviewed By User: A20ZDM2H6FXGTX |
| I have all of Creed's CDs and this one is my favorite. They are a great band and I hope they continue making music. Scott has an awesome voice and Mark is an awesome guitar player. I saw them in concert in September and they rock the house!! |
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| "haunting" | 2009-09-01 |
| - Reviewed By User: A3J0BJOY4ZQVAR |
| When I first heard Creed I thought, "What a joke." I grew up with metal and hard rock with the guarantee of Classic Rock over my shoulder. People would tell me, "Wow have you heard Creed?" and I would dismiss them because I wasn't receptive to new influences. I listened to Creed on the radio in the 90's and they seemed to be rock inspired. I still put off buying anything of theirs. The years progressed and since the spring of good hard rock was quickly drying up, I decided to buy a used copy of "My Own Prison." I listened to that CD for a while, while driving, grudgingly, but eventually realized that Creed is the next guide-on bearer of rock. The radio also made me a fan of Creed. I got "Human Clay", and "Weathered" because the days of getting a cutting-edge Cult album are long gone. I don't regret getting them, though, because now they are one of my favorite bands. On Weathered the title song will stay in your head forever or two weeks, whichever applies. Also, the phrase "You stand here with me" will be in your head for the same period of time. Sacrifice is good too. One Last Breath (6') will satisfy. "Got my back" will challenge a Christian's thought process in a good way. Anyway, it took me a while to accept(sorry, not Udo), but Creed is alright. |
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 "Big disappointment" | 2008-10-04 |
| - Reviewed By mewtuhist |
| Listen to the samples and buy the 1-2 good songs. Creed had two great albums, but this one shows why some bands should break up. |
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 "Dense, meaty 00's hard rock" | 2007-11-17 |
| - Reviewed By User: A5R3U8ZSFKAL4 |
Creed copped grief over the years as they were considered lightweights. Which always confused me since they were at least as heavy as many other bands that were lauded by the purists as great hard rock bands. I mean put up just about any of their albums against stuff like a lot of Deep Purple or Thin Lizzy and you'll find Creed just as heavy. Not necessarily as good, but as heavy. So quite why magazines like Classic Rock always felt compelled to put them down I'm not sure, apart from the jealousy factor.
And so that's my whine. As to the music? Well IMHO;
This album is in my mind the heaviest of the three Creed albums. Not that My Own Prison wasn't somewhat raw and attacking, it's just that here the band are able to manipulate their attack better and use their years of experience to create a more satisfying listening experience. With a general philosophy of everything louder than everything else Scott Stapps beautifully powerful roar swoops and soars through and over heavy rock stompers like the opening Bullets, a statement of intent if ever there was one.
As the album moves through it's numbers it becomes apparent that not every track is a gosh darn classic. I mean I've listened to this album plenty of times and still have trouble recalling the details of Freedom Fighter and Who's Got My Back but the fact is that even the more anonymous tunes here still fit on the album. They are consistent, if unspectacular.
Of course what got this album to hit the stratosphere sales wise wasn't just the groundwork laid with the previous album but the heads down rock of songs like Weathered which ride a seductive vocal melody atop a slow stomper of a musical attack. Not to mention the huge hit that was My Sacrifice, a soulful effort that can be taken in a number of ways. And that is a good thing as my gut instinct is that people don't want to be preached at. If they wanted that they'd buy a Gregorian chant album or something wouldn't they! And while this bands and Stapps in particular religious bent is well known for the most part they are smart enough to leave their lyrics open enough to interpretation to allow everyone to enjoy them.
As for the rest of the album, one of my favourite ever Creed numbers is Stand Here With Me where Stapp uses every ounce of that roaring voice of his to bring together both strident and lamenting aspects. But apart from that I find little use for songs such as Don't Stop Dancing or Lullaby, being the sort of tunes I listen once and then studiously ignore.
And that's why I can only give this album a low four stars. It is a good rock album but it's marred by a dud track or two above the allowable quota. |
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| "well weathered" | 2007-05-01 |
| - Reviewed By davidabaer |
In the twenty seconds between 5:20 and 5:46 of Track 3 ('who's got my back?), Creed goes from being a very good band to the lower echelons of greatness. It's all about restraint. Most drummers with Scott Phillips' talent would have let sticks erupt in mediocre bombast at the end of that run. Instead Phillips and guitarman Mark Trementi lay down a held-back track so taut you can almost feel your Achilles Tendon tightening under its influence.
Creed is not an exchangeable duo backing up the formidable voice of Scott Stapp. It is far more, a bona fide rock trio that ranks with the best of them. The loss of any of these guys at this stage of the band's ascent (2001) would have set them back, perhaps permanently.
Apart from the sheer gorgeous synch of these three artists, the other two strands of the artistic chord that weaves through this album are a spooky toggling between three-beat and four-beat rhythms together with a penchant for massive shifts in dynamics. It's the bands nuance--not a word often heard in the company of this genre--that keep this theme and variation from becoming trite or even easily noticeable.
That, and some fairly massive talent. Stype's voice sounds, well, 'weathered' far beyond his ears. In an interview, he credits it to lots of exercise and no caffeine. Well, OK. I think he's amazingly gifted and has worked that gift to the state of something like well-weathered high-quality leather.
When you take a step back, even in these overproduced times, and contemplate the artwork required to assemble eleven songs played by three men (well, maybe they had a *little* help from studio musicians) that do not fail to shake a listener's soul time after time, you have to take your hat off to these guys.
Stype's Christian upbringing has supplied him with powerful language, even if at this stage of his career it had been largely evacuated of its power over him. A biblically literate listener glimpses this all over Creed's music, but it shows itself more clearly in the exquisite 'one last breath':
Please come now I think I'm falling
I'm holding on to all I think is safe
It seems I found the road to nowhere
And I'm trying to escape
I yelled back when I heard thunder
But I'm down to one last breath
And with it let me say
Hold me now
I'm six feet from the edge and I'm thinking
That maybe six feet down
Ain't so far down
I'm looking down now that it's over
Reflecting on all my mistakes
I thought I found the road to somewhere
Somewhere in His grace
I cried out heaven save me
But I'm down to one last breath
And with it let me say
Let me say
Hold me now ...'
Reports suggest that the Love behind the beauty of this vocabulary may of late have asserted itself again over Stype. That would be a good thing.
Meanwhile, he's given us a glimpse of what it means to stand on the edge and wonder.
That is what art does, one of its accomplishments at any rate. The artistry of Creed thrust the band into altitudes it seemed at this point in its history poised to call home. They sounded oddly weathered there, not accustomed to the climes but confident in them. It was good. |
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| "Great" | 2006-11-14 |
| - Reviewed By dcavfactory |
This is just a great cd. Love them or hate them, Creed made a stellar cd here. The absolutely perfect "Stand here with me", "My Sacrifice", "Weathered", "Signs", "Freedom Fighter" are all as infectious as they are quality! Just great stuff. Sure, there are a couple slow points, but that is to be expected.
This is just an excellently (if not overly) produced and executed cd. Thats all there is too it. |
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