ALTER BRIDGE A DIFFERENT CREED WITH UNIVERSAL PUSH

With a fresh start at Universal Records, Alter Bridge can finally move past the Creed connections that dogged them for years.

Alter Bridge is currently out on the road in support of their new effort, Blackbird, and it’s the follow-up to their debut, One Day Remains. The band features three out of four members of Creed; Mark Tremonti, Scott Phillips, and Brian Marshall, but they’ve stepped away from the shadow of their old band.

The members bought out their contracts with Wind-Up Records, and signed a new deal with Universal. This along with severing ties to old management was part of their declaration that this wasn’t a shadow band to Creed. Tremonti talked about the biggest obstacle in getting the album done.

“Getting the album done was probably just we went through a lot of business things on the side. In these three years we had to switch record labels and management. That was the biggest obstacle. We had the record pretty much written before we went in the studio, but we’re glad it got drawn out because it helped us keep building on the ideas that we already had. We parted ways because it was in our both best interests. We saw things differently. We think of Alter Bridge as the band we’re going to retire with. I think they kind of thought of it as a baby-band, side project thing, and for Alter Bridge to be successful we needed a lot more support than we were getting.”

We asked Tremonti if he felt “the Creed thing” got in the way of their Wind-Up relations and their success.

“I think the Creed thing has been a stigma here in the (United) States. Over in Europe there hasn’t been that because over in Europe Creed never toured extensively over there. So we had pretty much had a fresh start. The fans got to look at us with an open mind, whereas over here, you got one out of ten guys who hear that it’s the Creed guys and they don’t want anything to do with it. Slowly but surely, especially on this record, we’re really stepping away from that. All the reviews we’ve gotten and all the people that once compared it to Creed say that it’s a completely different thing, and I think we’ve spent enough time away to gain the respect of people looking at this as its own thing.”

Alter Bridge is currently on tour through November 30 in Fort Myers, Florida. The first single from Blackbird is “Rise Today.”