When Creed emerged with their 1997 debut full-length, My Own Prison, the state of rock and metal was at an interesting place. Still reeling from the death of Kurt Cobain a few years prior, nu-metal, alternative rock, and post-grunge were the three dominant scenes around. Countless bands like Candlebox and Live sought to emulate the success of the grunge era, to varying results. Some, like Bush, were pigeonholed as shameless Nirvana ripoffs.
Then you had Creed, which dominated the last third of the ’90s with two massive albums – My Own Prison and Human Clay. In the span of a few years, they quickly went from playing the biggest local venues in Jacksonville to opening for…Metallica. While they eventually disbanded after Weathered became another multi-platinum hit in 2001, they reconvened for Full Circle in 2009 – but they’ve been on hiatus for over a decade now. It’s mostly due to their various other projects, especially Alter Bridge and Tremonti, which have been very successful.
While Creed was basically Nickelback before Nickelback exploded in popularity (in terms of being a commercially popular but critically unfavored rock band), there’s actually still quite a huge market for them to make some kind of return. They’ve sold tens of millions of albums worldwide, and the time could be right for something to happen.
Judging by the reaction to a simple change in the band’s profile picture and cover photo, though, it’s clear that there would be plenty of interest in some kind of reunion. And the fact remains that they wrote enough material to appeal to fans of harder rock, so any tour wouldn’t be all power ballads. Here’s hoping, but considering the reception, it does look likely that it’ll happen in some fashion.
