Alter Bridge guitarist Mark Tremonti has revealed he will sing lead vocals on a track on the band’s forthcoming album.
Speaking with Music Radar, Tremonti explained that it was producer Michael “Elvis” Baskette who first suggested he sing the track instead of vocalist Myles Kennedy, who was struggling for inspiration: “Elvis said, ‘Let’s take a negative and give you a chance to take that song that he’s not feeling and sing it.’”
Tremonti added that he also wrote the lyrics to the song: “…I wrote it about a fictional apocalypse. Right now it’s called ‘The Waters Rise’ and I’m glad to be able to have done it.”
Furthermore, Tremonti discussed the feel of the new album, explaining that it is more upbeat then the band’s previous offerings: “I don’t think it’s as dark as [our last album] ‘AB III,’ but listening to it, a lot of the lyrics are still on the darker side of things.”
He added: “…there’s definitely a few uplifting concepts and themes on there as well. There’s apocalyptic lyrics… all kinds of moods.”
While the lyrics may vary in style, Tremonti said the guitar work on the album, is mostly aggressive with one main exception: “There’s actually an nylon acoustic intro that features on there – another surprise we threw out there with Myles,” Tremonti explained. “I don’t think he’s ever featured on a big guitar intro to an Alter Bridge song. It’s called ‘Cry Of Achilles’ and he played me the part when we were putting the album together and I said, ‘Man, we’ve got to turn that into a song for sure!’ And it’s a big nylon string intro that he does and it’s fantastic, it’s one of my favourite songs on the album.”
Click here to read the full interview.
The new Alter Bridge will be released this September. Stay tuned for further updates.
Meanwhile, Alter Bridge will play one special U.S. show in October, with the venue and date to be announced on Monday (July 22). They’ll then head to Europe for a headlining tour with Shinedown and Halestorm.