Alter Bridge: Ranking Every Album From Worst To Best

1. Fortress

Think about why we love Alter Bridge. Why they're such a force in rock music. Every genre boundary they've walked, and the capabilities of all four guys, and what they bring to the table.

Yes, Walk the Sky is accomplished, yes Blackbird is anthemic and euphoric, but Fortress is utterly relentless in quality and confidence.

When you're opening an album with Cry of Achilles - a progressive song with unique time signatures and a twin guitar solo where Mark's half is furious in its proficiency - it cranks a needle they maintain for the remaining hour.

Lover is a deliciously dark track about a relationship ending in a shower of gunpowder, The Uninvited channels TOOL with its complex multi-string hammer-on riff, Bleed It Dry is Tremonti laying down a blues solo perfectly honing everything Myles had taught him, mixed with his own attack on the strings.

Speaking of Mark, Waters Rising has him take lead vocals for an entire song, the result being one of the band's best, and a brilliant continuation of Tremonti's solo album All I Was, with Myles layering the chorus.

On top of all this, you have straight-up djent riffs on Farther than the Sun, the machine gun clatter of Peace is Broken, and the shoulder-patting, 'we'll get through this' of All Ends Well.

As if all of that wasn't enough, the title track is a recorded version of the live 'guitar battles' Myles and Mark had been doing across various tours the previous year. Its entire middle third is dedicated to the pair trading licks and solo patterns, finishing the album off in style by cementing just how far the band has come as songwriters and bandmates.