Alter Bridge Mark Tremonti Interview: My Champion, Kirk Hammett Hardwired Solos & More

2. Evolving Two Bands' Core Sounds Simultaneously

S.T: Across the rest of 2017, you've got Alter Bridge right under Aerosmith at Download, then straight into another Tremonti album. I imagine you've gotten better at differentiating the two sides of your playing style, but as we've seen tracks like Peace is Broken have that Tremonti speed metal influence, are you going to start writing more anthemic Tremonti stuff?

M.T: The only thing I have planned for the next Tremonti record that I'm hoping for, is I wanna do kind of a two-album thing - one all-heavy like what people expect from Tremonti, and then one that's more stripped down, maybe more melodic than the other stuff.

It's all melodic, but I have a lot of ideas I'll go through and think, "No, that's a little sappier or a little more heartfelt or a little less heavy than fans would expect", but I love it, and I don't want it to go to waste.

This was a band I started because I wanted to get out all the ideas that I never thought I would get out there. I just have so many mellow ideas just as much as the heavy stuff that I wanna get out there, and I always write for myself and not necessarily for people to get into the record.

If I'm satisfied I'm happy, I hope the fans enjoy it as well, but I think if you start writing for other people it never works, but that being said, if I had a record that was all mellow ballads, there'd be some... backlash (laughs).

There'll be one project that's heavy, and one project that's mellow, and see what happens.