The songs on Alter Bridge's second release, Blackbird, rock along the lines of FM radio's best (Sevendust or Godsmack) and, at times, are heavy enough for a bloody, underground metal moshpit.

If you're like I was before listening to this album, you steer clear of Alter Bridge because you dismiss the band as "Creed all over again" (Alter Bridge's members are the guitarist, bassist and drummer from Creed but with a different singer), but this album proved me dead wrong. Even if you enjoyed some of the songs from Creed's first album, My Own Prison, you probably grew to despise the band by the time their second album, Human Clay, was released, quickly smothering the airwaves with its singles "Higher" and "With Arms Wide Open." Those two songs epitomized mushy girlfriend rock of the day and killed, or at least damaged, any self-respecting rocker's appreciation of the band. None of their subsequent radio hits could restore Creed's candy-tarnished rock n' roll credibility.

So when you heard that Creed ditched their singer Scott Stapp, replaced him with Myles Kennedy and changed their name to Alter Bridge, you probably assumed that you were

in for more of the same. Based on the radio singles from Alter Bridge's first album, One Day Remains, you felt your suspicions were confirmed. I know I did, so I was surprised

to hear the thrashy guitars and drums on the opening track, "Ties That Bind," which reminded me more of Lamb of God's "Laid to Rest" than anything Creed. Add in their singer's melodic voice, which tends towards the higher notes but without sounding high-pitched or whiney and you've got a song that is equally comfortable in a power-metal or radio-rock setting.

Even the album's heaviest songs are counterbalanced with catchy, stadium-filling vocals and melodic guitars, which makes it an album for the whole family. Guitarist Mark Tremonti seems to have a bottomless bag of riffs that cover a diverse range of rock n' roll territory. For example, "Buried Alive" opens with a clean guitar lick that reminds me of early REM, followed by a sludgy metal riff that retains a melodic resemblance to the opening riff, but rocks like Black Label Society. Even though the riffs on "One By One" and "White Knuckles" are worthy of death-metal heaviness, they don't clash with the optomistically triumphant choruses on either song.

You can tell the musicians have played together long enough to have each other down to a science. The drums give the guitars a punchy-ness that couldn't come across in the hands of a lesser drummer and the bass has a satisfying amount of low end, yet is tight enough to give the songs an unbreakable backbone.

However, this album is not without its weaknesses. Individually, most of the songs are a refreshingly unique mix of rock and metal, but if you listen to the songs back to back, it will start to feel repetitive and formulaic by the album's halfway mark. You'll come to expect heavy intros and verses which predictably lead to sing-along choruses, and you'll be right. However, there are only two tracks on the 13-song album that actually suck, both of which are wimpy power ballads that give me unwelcome flashbacks of Creed.

All in all, Blackbird is a fun, well-written album that seamlessly blends FM rock with metal, and I mean METAL, into a sound all its own.