Solid Performance If Only The Stage Was Smaller
Walking around the festival on the second morning at it seems that an Alter Bridge t-shirt is the required uniform of the day. Consisting of all the original members of Creed only with a singer who the band actually seem to get along with, Alter Bridge are American Alt rock in its purest form and for that they draw a pretty large crowd.
Kicking things off with ‘Come To Life’ Alter Bridge insure that those snoozing in the freak bout of sunshine are shaken awake as Mark Tremonti’s seething guitar thumps and wails alongside Myles Kennedy’s raging vocals. Epic and yet chillingly quite, ‘Blackbird’ receives the loudest response from the crowd as it appears to take on a life of its own, swelling to the brink of eruption before ‘Open Your Eyes’ nudges its way in with an anthemic reaching chorus with Kennedy announcing that today’s his fifth wedding anniversary and dedicating it to his wife.
With the slushy stuff out of the way Kennedy sets about making sure everyone is moving, demanding that “if you see my feet tapping, I want to see you clapping” before plunging into the blues driven stomp of ‘Travelling Riverside Blues’ that insures everyone does as the singer requested. It’s a solid performance from a band with experience and a strong following but there’s a sense that this would have been all the better if the band had been on a smaller stage.