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Creed
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Review
Creed:
Human Clay (BMG)
| by: Kembrew McLeod |
Remember the grunge era? A time
when lumbering grunge riffs sidled across MTV,
when dudes with long hair and angst in their
pants writhed across the screen? A time when rock
'n' roll seemed to be more about depression than
about sex. The New Kids on the Block had yet to
give birth to their progeny, metal had not yet
been "contaminated" by hip-hop, and Zac
Hanson had not yet learned how to speak.
Welcome to the land of Creed, where chunka-chunka
sub-Sabbath guitars rule and where there's more
than enough agony to go around. To give you but a
sample, check out singer Scott Stapp when he
moans, "The stillness is so lifeless with no
spirit in your soul/ Like children with no vision
do exactly what they're told/ Being led into the
desert/ For your strength will surely fade."
On songs such as "Faceless Man" (RealAudio
excerpt) and their current hit,
"Higher" (RealAudio
excerpt), Stapp sounds like Eddie Vedder
at his angriest, Vedder at his most contemplative
... OK, he just sounds like Vedder, period. Not
that Stapp is copping the Pearl Jamster's style,
necessarily, it's just that both are openly
emotional singers.
Honestly, many of the songs sound the same, with
one midtempo riff-a-rama blurring into another in
a way that makes Human Clay sound, as a
whole, like one big misery-filled Jell-O fruit
salad. That is, while it doesn't sound generic
and it has many different identifiable chunks,
those chunks are more or less the same, and if
you took a bite from one side of the serving
bowl, it would taste more or less the same as a
bite from another part.
But then one person's homogeneity is another
person's consistency, and Creed have created a
solid Creed album — the kind their loyal
grunge-nostalgic fans have come to expect. |
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