Creed Are Back Because Music Industry Sucks

11/23/09 6:14pm

by Sarah Kurchak (CHARTattack)

Creed aren't the only band from their era to make a big return this year.

Sugar Ray and Limp Bizkit are also flying and rolling their way back from the dead. Third Eye Blind and Vertical Horizon both released records this year after a long break from the spotlight and Stone Temple Pilots are hard at work on their first studio album in almost a decade.

The mid-'90s, it seems, are back with an angst-ridden vengeance.

According to Creed guitarist Mark Tremonti, this trend might have more to do with the current state of the music industry than any sense of post-grunge nostalgia.

"I think it's because the industry isn't supporting a lot of new acts and is just kind of throwing things against the wall and seeing if they stick and, if it doesn't, they just kind of move on. There isn't a lot of band development now," he opines. "There's just a huge open void for bands out there on both radio and touring, so the more established bands from the '90s are going to have more of a foothold than some of these new bands nowadays."

Tremonti finds the industry so treacherous that he's not even sure Creed would make it if they were a new group just starting out today.

"It would have been tough," he admits. "It's the toughest I've seen it by far."

Whether a reunited Creed, whose album Full Circle came out at the end of October, will fare any better in our current world remains to be seen, but the band are well aware they're going to need to do more than rest on their past laurels if they want to keep making music and stay on the road.

"I think a lot of bands get back together, and just kind of rely on what they had going before the split," Tremonti says.

"We wanted to come out with something better than we've ever done because we've been out there. We've been working as hard as we can to stay in this business. Coming back, we're coming back stronger than we've ever been, so hopefully our fans see that."