All I Was
Raise that fist with the index and pinkie outstretched: rawk! Good old fashioned metal. This is how you do it. Mark Tremonti’s first solo album is his best work. There’s no pretention here, just riffs. And they are awesome riffs. What sets it apart, though – aside from the quality of the riffage – is the interesting mixture of thrash verses and anthemic choruses. One review I read of the album said it “perfectly tips the scales between all-out shredding and hypnotic hooks.” That’s a great description that I can’t better, so I’m stealing it. This is as heavy as calcified elephant dung, but it’s also melodic and uplifting.There are elements of Tremonti’s earlier work here, including the good (early Creed) the ok (Alter Bridge) and the terrible (later Creed). Certainly he has always been a great guitarist; the surprise is that he has an awesome voice too. He can sing metal, not just shout it. This is light-years tighter, heavier and cleverer than anything he has done before. The best track here is the blinding ‘You Waste Your Time’, which is pretty representative of the album as a whole. Yes, at times it feels a little 90s, but then the 90s were awesome for metal. A head banging classic.