Creed - Weathered (2001)

The week Creed released their fourth album, Weathered, lead vocalist Scott Stapp mentioned in an interview that they didn't really care about the widespread critical disdain for his group, since Led Zeppelin wasn't appreciated either -- not until they released their fourth album in 1971, that is. Stapp's assessment is a little off; Zeppelin never really enjoyed good reviews by most of the rock-crit establishment -- at least until 1988 when Zep-mania gripped the nation and even prompted Rolling Stone to put Robert Plant on the cover -- but his sentiment is right on target since he's saying Creed isn't a band for the critics, they simply do what they do and the proof that they're right is in the millions of fans. Well, Creed certainly isn't a critic's band, but not because critics hate heavy rock -- grunge sorta blew that bugaboo out of the water when it became mandatory to take anybody with heavy guitars seriously -- but because Creed simply works very earnestly within a tradition without ever expanding it, without ever adding humor or even cracking a smile. R.E.M. and U2 may have had the weight of the world on their shoulders during the first Bush era, but they lightened up occasionally. Creed never does. They are a very serious band, realizing that the world is very serious, so music is a serious business, a way of expressing their faith, passion, yearning, and love -- all things that are quite serious so they should be treated seriously. Their hearts are in the right place -- let it never be said that they're only in this for the money or the fame; they even advertise Stapp's With Arms Wide Open Foundation charity in the liner notes -- but the earnestness in their approach is magnified by their resolutely unimaginative neo-grunge. Try as they may -- and they do, bringing in the Tallahasee Boys' Choir for "Don't' Stop Dancing," incorporating a Cherokee Indian prayer on "Who's Got My Back," sprinkling the album with some keyboards, and stretching out to near-epic lengths occasionally -- they don't break from that template, and to all but the hardcore, this is simply another Creed record, one that has the same faults or virtues, depending on your viewpoint. And that's why Creed isn't Led Zeppelin, even though both were slagged by critics, say what you may, Zeppelin changed on each of those first four records, where Creed has stayed the same. (This does get the honorary Fred Durst's Chocolate Starfish award for worst album cover of the year, however.)

Foo Fighters - Sonic Highways (2014)

Nobody ever would've thought the Foo Fighters were gearing up for a hiatus following the vibrant 2011 LP Wasting Light, but the group announced just that in 2012. It was a short-lived break, but during that time-off, lead Foo Dave Grohl filmed an ode to the classic Los Angeles recording studio Sound City, which in turn inspired the group's 2014 album, Sonic Highways. Constructed as an aural travelog through the great rock & roll cities of America -- a journey that was documented on an accompanying HBO mini-series of the same name -- Sonic Highways picks up the thread left dangling from Sound City: Real to Reel; it celebrates not the coiled fury of underground rock exploding into the mainstream, the way the '90s-happy Wasting Light did, but rather the classic rock that unites the U.S. from coast to coast. No matter the cameo here -- and there are plenty of guests, all consciously different from the next, all bending to the needs of their hosts -- the common denominator is the pumping amps, sky-scraping riffs, and sugary melodies that so identify the sound of arena rock at its pre-MTV peak. There are a few unexpected wrinkles, as when Ben Gibbard comes aboard to give "Subterranean" a canned electronic pulse and Tony Visconti eases the closing "I Am a River" into a nearly eight-minute epic, but the brief eight-song album just winds up sounding like nothing else but the Foo Fighters at their biggest, burliest, and loudest. They've become the self-proclaimed torch barriers for real rock, championing the music's history but also blessedly connecting the '70s mainstream and '80s underground so it's all one big nation ruled by six-strings. That the mainstream inevitably edges out the underground on Sonic Highways is perhaps inevitable -- it is the common rock language, after all -- but even if there's a lingering predictability in the paths the Foo Fighters follow on Sonic Highways, they nevertheless know how to make this familiar journey pleasurable.