CREED
Weathered
Wind-up
Yes, it’s true. The Creed of four years ago is gone. The searing power that Creed held from start to finish in their 1997 debut album, My Own Prison, has been severely turned down. It’s still there, but it’s in spurts. Not surprisingly, many have left Creed for dead. They’re not. In fact, they’re still making some damned good music – it’s just tossed into a mixed bag that, unfortunately, has some sappy nothingness in it as well.
Weathered, released on Nov. 27, is their latest offering. The disc is pretty much an even split between the emotion-filled, roaring Creed that we grew up loving and the commercial sell-out Creed that fans feared would rear its ugly head after the success of songs like “With Arms Wide Open.”
There’s no denying it: the unbelievable success of Creed’s second album, Human Clay, changed the band forever. Front man Scott Stapp realizes that if he markets to more then one genre, he makes substantially more money than he otherwise would. Human Clay brought us the single “Higher,” a song with uplifting lyrics and swirling guitars, but a song that was palatable to nearly every sector of the music world. Weathered brings us “My Sacrifice” first. It’s a song that, well, has uplifting lyrics, swirling guitars and palatability with pop stations nation wide. Notice a pattern? Maybe they just should have called the tune “Higher II.”
Take some heart, though, if you’re a three-album Creed fan and are worried that your band has lot every sense of masculinity and heart that they had back in the day in favor of poppy fluff and sap. They’re not N’ Sync yet.
Weathered has some outstanding hard rock tracks on it. That’s right, hard rock tracks. Those would be songs that have some depth, power and emotion to them. The title track for the album is outstanding, filled with the emotion one would expect on a track from My Own Prison. The lyrics for it speak to the same people that My Own Prison did, the downtrodden that refuse to give up. “Believe what you will / That is your right / But I choose to win / So I choose to fight,” Stapp sings.
Other impressive tracks on Weathered include the first two songs, “Bullets” and “Freedom Fighter,” and the fourth song, “Signs.” “Bullets” could probably be compared to “What If” from the Human Clay album – it’s loud, passionate, and riff-heavy. If there’s a song on this album that has heavy hard rock airplay written all over it, this is the one. “Freedom Fighter” is another tune on the heavy side. The lyrics reflect the times even if one doesn’t agree with Stapp’s message: “I’m just a freedom fighter / No remorse / Raging on in holy war / Soon there’ll come a day / When you’re face to face with me.”
Weathered, unfortunately, ends musically after the eighth track. The last three songs are absolutely horrible. Creed has officially released their worst song of all time after this one. “Lullaby,” the last song on the disc, sounds like it’s something Stapp sang to his wife one night and recorded before he went to bed. It’s horrible, sheer syrup. If I can help it, I will never listen to that song again.
The biggest downfall to this album is that it isn’t consistent. Because of Stapp’s insistence on making Creed span the musical horizons, they don’t stay true to their roots as one of the best hard rock bands in America. Weathered has some of the best songs Creed has ever put out on it. But it’s not a good album. There’s no continuity to the album, the pieces don’t fit together as a whole. There’s a hard song here, a sappy, sad song there, that horrible lullaby – and a mediocre album overall. I suppose as long as Scott Stapp is raking in the dough it’s going to be like this. Don’t be fooled – Creed is experimenting, finding where the most money lies for them. As long as they can play to more than one musical taste, they’re going to. They’re going to make some damned good music; they’re going to make stuff that makes anyone other than the 13-year-old girl group cover its ears and scream. Get used to it.
