Florida rockers Alter Bridge are masters of the epic and bombastic. Their drums erupt like walls of cannons. Choruses stretch to the back of the arena and beyond. Guitars are played hard by men with legs apart; wailing solos come along as reliably as buses.
Two decades ago, in a previous incarnation, Creed, they were one of the biggest bands on the planet. Albums such as 1999’s Human Clay and 2001’s Weathered went multi-platinum on the back of radio-friendly rock anthems such as My Sacrifice and With Arms Wide Open. When that band fell apart in 2004 amid vocalist Scott Stapp’s drug abuse and undiagnosed bipolar disorder, guitarist Mark Tremonti, drummer Scott Phillips and bass player Brian Marshall added new vocalist Myles Kennedy and regrouped as Alter Bridge, and gradually hauled themselves back to playing vast arenas.
They certainly know the art form, bringing steam cannon, a fetching computerised graphic visual display and lights that beam like searchlights to the farthest row of seats. Strangely, for all the visual spectacle, the band members themselves are almost anonymous: four black-clad men who often play together in a close-knit unit on the vast stage. There are no video screens, as if the band want the music, not their grins, gurns or personalities, to speak – or rather holler – for itself.
It certainly packs a big noise. Where Creed played post-grunge, Alter Bridge blend it with metal and classic rock, at a fearsome volume. With Kennedy having surely taken notes from Deep Purple’s Ian Gillan on the fine art of wailing, at times the Orlando rockers could be a hard rock Soundgarden or Pearl Jam. The quartet apparently aren’t keen on being tagged “Christian rockers” but their songs don’t exactly shy away from religious symbolism. They have titles such as Godspeed and Take the Crown and one of their best – Rise Today – sees the whole audience singing what appears to be a plea to a resurrected Jesus: “Won’t you rise today and change the world?”
Between songs, the guys epitomise the meek inheriting the earth. Kennedy talks about how much they love the venue and the audience and tells how the gig is “magical” for the four-piece; they throw 2016’s My Champion into the setlist because somebody apparently requested it during the day and the guitarist even turns (what Kennedy calls) “Santa Tremonti” to give a lucky fan a guitar. They seem like obscenely nice guys, although the relentless bludgeoning riffola can get a bit too, well, bludgeoning. They’re at their best when their music has space to breathe. The acoustic In Loving Memory, written by Tremonti as a heartfelt lament for his late mother (“I feel you in the wind, you guide me constantly”) is truly lovely, illuminated with a sea of twinkling phones.
Tremonti plays the guitar part to the Beatles’ Blackbird by way of introducing their own fabulous song of the same name, an eight-minute rock anthem with a haunting guitar motif, an eerily uplifting chorus and a shredding guitar solo once voted the greatest of all time. By now, it’s pretty much an arena-rock masterclass, with a drum solo, copper-bottomed rock anthems and massed audience “whoa whoa oh”s. Phillips triggers another explosion from his snare drum, the seven steam cannons erupt for the last time and Alter Bridge say farewell to Manchester with, inevitably, a big bang.
• At SSE Hydro, Glasgow on 17 December. Then touring until 21 December.
