Mark Tremonti Explains What Made Creed Stand Out in the ‘90s

Creed are experiencing a huge resurgence in popularity ever since they announced their reunion a few months ago, with many people being reminded of why they fell in love with the band in the first place. In a new interview, guitarist Mark Tremonti has explained why he thinks Creed stood out against other groups when they first became popular in the late '90s.

Creed's debut album My Own Worst Prison came out in 1997 and has since been certified six times platinum. Its follow-up Human Clay was released two years later and peaked at No. 1 on the albums chart, as did 2001's Weathered (the former of which has also been certified diamond).

The group went on hiatus for a few years before reuniting for 2009's Full Circle, and they haven't put out any new music since. But the announcement of their 2024 Creed Cruise and subsequent North American summer tour has made them one of the most buzzworthy groups in music again as of late, so Tremonti reflected on the '90s during an interview with Metal Hammer and pinpointed why he thinks the band were so special at the time.

"When Creed first came out, all the bands of rock radio were kind of upbeat, more pop rock," the guitarist recalled, citing bands such as Third Eye Blind, Marcy Playground and Semisonic as an example.

"So, when we came out with 'My Own Prison,' to me at the time, it was the only sombre song that was doing well on the rock charts. I think the seriousness of it grabbed people’s attention. The grunge scene had a lot of that moody stuff going on, but when we had come about, it had been years since the grunge thing really popped.”

By 1997, Nirvana had already been broken up for three years due to the death of Kurt Cobain, and Dave Grohl was on the rise with his new project Foo Fighters. Soundgarden were just about to call it quits around that time, and Alice In Chains had played their last shows with Layne Staley the year prior. Nu-metal was what really became popular in the latter half of the '90s, with Korn's 1996 release Life Is Peachy debuting at No. 3 and Limp Bizkit starting to gain momentum after their debut Three Dollar Bill, Y'all came out in '97.

As with any band that gets popular, though, once Creed found success, they also faced a lot of criticism, especially as the internet became a bigger part of peoples' daily lives.

“You have to have thick skin," Tremonti shared. "Back when Creed were on the radio 24 hours a day, if a friend would call me and say,‘ Man, this person online said this or that about your band’, I’d be like, ‘Just let me enjoy myself.’ I’ve been able to live on both sides of that fence across my career — to have the very recognized commercial band that had a lot of success, but also had some backlash, and then to have Alter Bridge, who everybody’s always been very complimentary about, but we’ve never sold the millions and millions of records that Creed did.”

In another interview with New Jersey radio station 105.5 WDHA, Tremonti said he and his Creed bandmates were "blown away" by how well the sale for the band's reunion tour did.

"I wish I could sell a tenth of the tickets Creed sells with Tremonti band. And that's why we appreciate how well Creed has done, 'cause we get to relive those years that we first got excited about being professional musicians," he said.

Check out that interview below.