Review Summary: How Us Show Will End The? That's a great question.
I’m not gonna make this about Creed. I promise.
Kind of.
Here’s the thing, I’ve been a dyed-in-the-wool Creed fan since I saw Scott Stapp pantomime Jesus Christ and, from there, their albums (progressing from cassette to compact disc as age and budget allowed) became a near-daily part of my life. But it wasn’t because I cared about Stapp’s hamfisted messaging and skim-milk platitudes. It was the three other dudes in this band, the ones who could ***ing jam that whetted my appetite for “heavy” music.
When Alter Bridge was borne out of the ashes of Creed’s ruination, it represented a sort of freedom; a relinquishing of expectations. The trio, now joined by the soaring vocals and digestible persona of Myles Kennedy, constituted a rebirth of sorts. The rest of that is history. Alter Bridge’s discography speaks for itself.
But why am I mentioning all of this in an album review that only features one of these musicians? Because Mark Tremonti’s history is part-and-parcel to the music he creates. His influences, his previous contributions, and his immense talents pass through, over, and under each other. For good and bad, Tremonti redresses the sins of his father time and time again. When one listens to “The End Will Show Us How” (or say that backwards like the album art suggests), it’s easy to see Tremonti’s history standing front-and-center time and time again. All of his riffs follow a self-imposed lineage, each one standing slightly left or right of the other’s shadow. They soar, they articulate, they push and pull. For better and for worse.
That’s not to say that Tremonti’s stylings still don’t have a certain level of sameness. Like “Marching in Time”, Tremonti’s leanings into the bombastic, the balladry, and the heavy results in an album that risks falling victim to redundancy. For standout tracks like the opener, “The Mother, The Earth, and I” you have something like “Tomorrow We Will Fail” or “The Bottom” which shows Tremonti falling back on the tropes of hard rock ballads meant for the nosebleeds and rafters of the stadiums he seems so enamored by. Still, it is difficult for me to press this fault more than I need to. Considering the sheer amount of riffs and songs that have come from Tremonti’s brain over the course of three decades, such an attachment to a formula is to be expected and partly forgiven.
While I have a certain attachment to “Marching in Time” that overlooks a lot of what I’ve cited as being problematic on “The End Will Show Us How”, I can’t help but see Tremonti’s new album, like his riffs, as standing just slightly to the side of the shadow of its predecessor.
Still bombastic, with a squeaky-clean production by Michael Baskette (again, for better or for worse), still chocked full of riffs, while tripping over itself at times, and still lyrically appealing to the sentimentalities likely shared by the lion’s share of Tremonti fans (myself slightly excluded), “The End Will Show Us How” is a solid, although unspectacular, entry into Mark Tremonti’s solo canon. One has to ask themselves if a refresh, a dirtier production even, could one day work in Tremonti’s favor. If he ever finds the time that is.
