from the November '04 issue of Power Play Europe: ALTER BRIDGE "One Day Remains" How many albums have even one song capable of stopping you dead in your tracks on a first listen? Not many, that's for sure. "One Day Remains", the debut album from Alter Bridge, has at least four, one of which ("Down To My Last") is the most incredible song I have heard all year, and another ("Open Your Eyes") was recently described by a friend of mine as the best rock song she had ever heard. This album is that good. And that's some opening paragraph for a debut album... but once you learn that three quarters of Alter Bridge is made up of Mark Tremonti, Scott Phillips, and Brian Marshall, all from the now defunct multi-million selling Creed, it's less of a shock. That all-important fourth slot is occupied by the God-like former Mayfield Four vocalist/ guitarist Myles Kennedy, a man whose husky delivery and impassioned wailings send shivers down my spine in a way that I've never experienced before. Let me tell you: the quality of the songwriting and musicianship here is positively sublime, but it is the mesmerizing, heart-stopping voice of Kennedy that lifts this album to such lofty heights that, Nightwish's "Once" aside, this is by far the best album you will hear this year. You want to know the strangest thing of all? Even though I'm heaping such praise on Alter Bridge, I really don't care for Creed, nor have I ever. The connection is there - you'd have to be deaf to miss it, but where Creed's music often wallows in its own self-pity, the songs on "One Day Remains" positively soar. And though much of the subject matter that the band waxes so beautifully about within the lyrics is desperately, heartrendingly sad, the overwhelmingly impassioned delivery from Kennedy rushes at you and crashes against your senses with wave after wave of the kind of blissful sadness that only comes from overcoming deep sorrow; and throughout, it inspires hope and joy where you would expect it to depress. Picking highlights would be like having to choose a favourite child, but the aforementioned "Down To My Last" and "Open Your Eyes" (already a smash hit single over the pond) are literally unmissable, as are the soul-stirring power ballad "Broken Wings", the emotion-tugging "Shed My Skin", and the slow burning, Creed-like "Burn It Down". When the band tears it up, such as on the marvellously uptempo rocker "One Day Remains" (a track that would never have been entertained on a Creed album), the spiky, alternative metal of "Metalingus" and the drivingly heavy opener "Find The Real", they hit hard, but for me the necessary drop in passion leaves an aching hole in the songs. That, though, is just me being ultra fussy. Aimed unequivocally at the US rock audience, "One Day Remains" will be a massive, and deserved, commercial hit, and unless you have no tolerance for that end of the rock spectrum, I urge you to seek it out, as it is just absurdly good. Powerpoints: 10 out of 10 by Mark Hoaksey