You can rely on them: For almost 20 years, the US quartet Alter Bridge has been serving up modern rock songs that skilfully oscillate between heaviness and catchiness. The recently released, seventh studio album “Pawns & Kings”, which is currently touring through Europe, also takes this line. Yesterday’s stopover in the Wiener Stadthalle turned into a triumphal procession for Myles Kennedy and Co. There were only small things to complain about.
From the very first second, a sound was produced that could best be compared to a Hollywood blockbuster: a bit too oversized in the hall, there were bombastic sounds everywhere, the guitars of the songwriters buzzed around each other Kennedy and Mark Tremonti, while the rhythm section Brian Marshall (bass) and Scott Phillips (drums) worked stoically forward. Fortunately, the controls were turned down a notch over time, which greatly benefited the dynamics.
At least there are some details to discover in tracks like the catchy “Addicted To Pain” or the new feat “Sin After Sin”. Alter Bridge may be schooled in rock and metal suitable for the masses, but they always know how to grease up their songs with progressive ideas, which also applies to the new material. “It’s denser than a lot of what we’ve done before,” Tremonti said before the gig in the APA interview. “You could also say: there is an awful lot of information in there. It was important to us that the record is fundamentally very reduced. What you hear in these songs, we also offer on stage. No strings, no synths, just us.”
It’s correct. Kennedy and Tremonti played each other creative balls riff after riff and complemented each other on the microphone in a way that could best be described as blind trust. Certainly there are other rock acts that have more to offer when it comes to surprises. But Alter Bridge are reliability personified when headbangers are to be served as well as those who want to sing along fervently in stadium-ready refrains. And the tender moments? Of course there was, as the acoustically performed “In Loving Memory” proved.
What was so easy to do in a live context and was enthusiastically celebrated by a good 3,500 fans is ultimately also hard work. Especially in the songwriting process there is little time for anything else, Tremonti pointed out. The musician is by no means someone who is only satisfied with one thing. Just this spring he released a Sinatra cover album, with which he is raising money for the National Down Syndrome Society in the USA. And in between he writes his first novel. “It’s about these desert tribes fighting for their resources. You could probably call it science fiction, but at the same time it could very well happen that way. It’s somewhere between ‘Indiana Jones’, ‘Blade Runner’ and ‘Mad Max’,” laughed Tremonti.
And Alter Bridge? Will probably just continue as before and deliver more than solid rock shows. Even if singer Myles Kennedy, who spent his 53rd birthday in Vienna on Sunday, no longer becomes an entertainer – with this song material it was quite bearable that the few audience interactions in between remained rather wooden. A drop of bitterness, however, was that after an hour and a half, the encore “Cry of Achilles” remained in the quiver for the first time on this tour, after all one of the best tracks of this band. Then just next time – it will definitely come.