ALTER BRIDGE: Walk The Sky (ALTERNATIVE METAL): review / opinion to read on Music Waves

Between them Mark Tremonti and Myles Kennedy could occupy the modern melodic metal news every year as their fertility is so impressive. As soon as the previous Alter Bridge was finished, he began writing his fourth solo album "A Dying Machine" with a quality that was acclaimed, and Kennedy focused on his first solo album "Year Of The Tiger" and the "Living The Dream" with his friend Slash both released last year.

For this sixth album, taking advantage of the dynamics of the excellent "The Last Hero", Alter Bridge begins its demonstration on classical and solid music with the welcoming "Wouldn't You Rather" and "In The Deep" which unroll all the American know-how in terms of power, refrains chiselled and heavy riffs. Quickly the power-ballad comes out in a format that was also conventional but whose sounds bring a novelty with its freezing synthesizer ambiences of the 80s. Alter Bridge repeats the experience with the threatening "Walking On The Sky" and a harmonically demanding "Pay No Mind", both in melodies and choirs, which adds a different colour to the band's already extensive palette. Alter Bridge tags his album with unifying tracks like "Native Son", "Forever Falling" (sung by Tremonti, who is becoming more and more comfortable in this position) or "Take The Crown" which act as stallions in the Alter Bridge style inherited from the Creed era with their intro arpeggios and their modern metal refined to the extreme.

The epic and Hollywood side of the Americans is not forgotten and points to the very arranged 'The Bitter End', whose supercharged production gives it a Devin Townsend side, and the Dantesque 'Dying Light' which closes 'Walk The Sky' in the most beautiful way. With no truce or faux pas (if you want to be fussy, "Tear Us Apart" shines a little less bright in the middle of this hour of sparkling metal) Alter Bridge goes on and on without falling into the easy way. Moreover, the unprecedented composition process that saw Myles and Mark bring their finalized compositions to build this record was not without risk. But far from creating an incoherent and disparate album, this method provides it with its diversity and freshness. The symbol of this symbiosis is the central "Indoctrination", undoubtedly one of the best tracks ever composed by the band, which begins on Tremonti's cryptic vocals accompanied by a heavy riff tuned very low before a festival of breaks and vocal modulation by Kennedy finishes bringing it its incredible density.

The new creative process has produced results that are as good as the band's previous albums, with a variety and audacity that are also mastered. At the top of the genre, Alter Bridge is unstoppable. The bet of melodic excellence while offering compositions that are capable to reach the greatest number of people is once again totally successful. - Official website

ALTER BRIDGE

WALK THE SKY

NAPALM RECORDS

ALTERNATIVE METAL