Critic's evaluation
A little less than five years after the announcement of his third studio album, Scott Stapp has returned to solo songwriting, which has led him to embark on a new chapter in his career. Called Higher Power, the singer's new album follows The Space Between The Shadows and comes out at the same time as Creed resume their live activities.
A sour, dark sonorous sound, as if he were walking on muddy, leeching ground, emerges from the synchrony between the guitars of Ben Flanders and Yiannis Papadopoulos. Although Dango Cellan's drums are pronounced in this spectrum with a shrill sonar, what is striking is the dull, sweetly synthetic sound of the synthesizer, giving it an air of something epic and supernatural. On the title track, Scott Stapp gives an explosive and visceral performance with his nasal timbre. As the melody matures as an exponent of alternative metal, Stapp turns the work into a motivational and inspirational anthem that lifts the viewer's energy, removes all the mud that dampens it, and makes it ready to face and live another day. The title track is a song purely about overcoming, perseverance and predetermination. A product that is still very much autobiographical in that it represents the singer's own rebirth in the face of the shadows that had falsely comforted him for so long.
The power is already at its maximum. With a striking, mature melody led by a trio of strings unable to hide the dense, dry and strident groove of Sammy Hudson's bass in the sound base, the song brings a dirtiness and precision already traditional of the sound created by Stapp, while parading a kind of dark and serious aggression. Growing in its layers in order to amplify this stabbing sense, Deadman's Trigger finds its apex in an infectious chorus. Maintaining such a linear melodic flow, the song presents a lyricism embraced by an interesting metaphor about the people around us who are capable of putting us down as an instinct for pleasure. It's as if the protagonist was the trigger for accessing his own environments of abyssal unconsciousness that place him in the realm of melancholy, suffering, pain and depression. Whether stimulated by others or by his own impulses, the individual presented in Deadman's Trigger is aware of his emotional and lucid fragility.
From the top of a tower that looks out over the monastery's surroundings, the mountain peaks and the different layers of snow are striking for their pure, crystalline content. There is no sign of fear, only of an endless fullness of spirit that is contagious due to the purity of the atmosphere. In the distance, the last rays of the sun shine through the white carpet and prepare for the new dawn. Starting with a linear, consistent and somewhat sombre melody that flirts with part of the sound of Under The Botton, a single by Ugly Kid Joe, When Love Is Not Enough erupts into an undulating chorus that gives way to a bridge in which the lead guitar screams and writhes velvety as if in numb pain. It is with the help of such a melodic rhythmic scope that When Love Is Not Enough dialogues about the honest desire to overcome pain and the humility of asking for help to achieve this. It's a track about rebuilding inner emotional balance through love.
A radio voice appears as if it were giving a lecture, but a lecture whose meaning is to incite the closing of a cycle. As such, what follows is an acoustic guitar with a reflective sonar breaking the terrifying silence of infinity. Stapp appears not as a first-person narrator, but as an omnipresent descriptor who brings the consequences of acts experienced impulsively out of despair. Exploding into a chorus with a simple melody, but a grandly touching harmony, What I Deserve is a track in which the character punishes himself for his lack of persistence and faith in life. However, it also communicates that love is an inexhaustible and unbreakable feeling that endures and lives on even when the scenery is devoid of any trace of light. It's no coincidence that the most striking lines in the narrative about an individual asking for redemption are "love is breathing" and "you couldn't stop it if you tried".
The dust on the dirt road rises at the wind's command. The sky is already setting and silence is beginning to define the soundtrack of this bucolic landscape. While the perfume of the last remaining flowers before the onset of winter scents the garden, the horizon is taken over by a curiously contagious sense of nostalgia and melancholy. Minimalist, introspective, delicate and with a reflective freshness, If These Walls Could Talk is structured under a minimalist aesthetic that makes it slightly poignant. Growing gently in harmony, the song now has the presence of a trembling sweet acidity in the melodic base provided by the sonar of the hammond and a soft sonar of the rattle drawing out the rhythmic beat. Surprisingly, just when the listener seemed to know every inch of the song, an extra detail appears. A deep, powerful female voice enters the scene, dominating the second half of the song. It's Dorothy providing more substance with her vocals of vast range and consistency. In the form of a ballad with few sound elements, If These Walls Could Talk places the walls as omnipresent characters who quietly observe the fall and rise of an individual in emotional conflict. They are proof of the weakness, but also of the strength and resilience of a person whose desire to overcome transcends bodily and spiritual limits. It is a portrait of self-knowledge as a path to redemption.
Starting with an undulating chant with an Arabic aesthetic, Stapp introduces a new chapter which, preceded by a fade-in guitar, is transformed into a striking track with an alternative metal sound. Softer than the title track, Black Butterfly repeats the rhythmic-melodic formula densely explored in The Space Between The Shadows. With the same epic content as the album's opening track, the present work continues with the stimulating refinement that the vocalist continues to experience on the new album. Graced by the sitar's sonar at the beginning of the bridge, Black Butterfly is a song denotedly about rebirth, about gaining the strength to continue fighting for life and against the obstacles that the art of living imposes on the individual. It's about freedom. It's breathing. It's becoming aware of the infinite greatness of the soul.
It's curious how, just from the first few chords, the melody suggests a similarity to the introductory sounds of both Sweet Home Alabama, a Lynyrd Skynyrd single, and Aerials, a System Of A Down single. The fact is that the opening guitar leads to an atmosphere of tension, expectation and insecurity. It's then that the song explodes into sexy phrases in its fiery guitar riffs, communicating a simple inclination towards alternative metal. Instrumentally more powerful and precise, Quicksand talks about the unconscious behavior of a large slice of society that pretends not to see the needy and immerses itself in a false sense of utopia to justify not only its denial of the humble, but an invisible filter of normality in social scenarios that are clearly not normal, but mistakenly common.
The sonar of the synthesizer, with its icy sharpness, is like watching the sun rise over the mountains in the gradual process of dawn. Once again exploring sensitive, introspective atmospheres, Stapp presents a song driven by the bass and its slight stridency of contagiously mournful energy. Interestingly, as the song evolves melodically, it's as if, in the midst of the false comfort of suffering, there are sudden flashes of hope falling on the body of the sufferer in a kind of spiritual pass provided by a soft, melodic verse extracted from the guitar. With the typical, reenergizing sound of the banjo in the last repetition of the chorus, You're Not Alone is a mostly minimalist work in which the lyricism explores the reality of an individual who is out of touch with himself and disbelieves that he deserves help in his emotional rebalancing process. In the meantime, You're Not Alone aims to inform us that, even when we seem to be alone, even when there seems to be no way out, all it takes is a minimum of humility to be able to hear the voice of an omnipresent being full of light who will show us the path to regeneration, to rebalancing. To the fullness of the spirit. Only in this way does self-knowledge become something tangible. After all, regardless of the situation, loneliness is the most perfect untruth.
The wind comes in icy puffs. The vegetation sways in a sad waltz so that the colors of the flowers have lost their intensity and vivacity. For that single individual kneeling on the edge of this canyon, there is no rain to help sweep away the suffering. At that moment, it's just him and his conscience, which causes tears to flow freely down a face whose gaze is fixed on the horizon, but physically distant. While a Celtic aroma is extracted from the acoustic guitar, representing the water of tears, the hammond emerges with a gradual and polite presence whose delicately acidic and sharp sonar suggests a light through the dense cracks of gray clouds. This is how Dancing In The Rain reaches its apex: with an offer of hope. Speaking of resilience, persistence and even self-control, the track helps the listener to realize that the sun is an opportunity for a new chance, a new dawn and to be grateful for life.
Its beginning already denotes drama, suffering and torpor. With the cello emerging from the melodic base and the guitar in a lacrimal riff, the listener soon feels hooked by this strangely contagious sense of melancholy. Evolving melodically in such a way as to make the listener visualize a beautiful setting sky capable of spreading an irresistible sense of hope, Weight Of The World has a strong motivational stamp, while, as with You're Not Alone and Dancing In The Rain, it tries to instill in the listener's unconscious the truth that, even in the most distressing moments, there will always be a higher power offering encouragement, help, compassion and protection.
It's the mark of evolution. Higher Power works as a metaphor for a ladder whose rungs Scott Stapp has climbed further along the path of wisdom in the art of lyrical composition and harmonic construction. It's a product in which music has come together with faith in an intense and visceral way, but at the same time delicate and generous.
Despite this, it would be wrong to say that the album functions as a kind of sonorized mass or a worship service made up of melodies. It is true that the material has a Christian lyrical essence, but the way it disseminates teachings and represents those individuals in deep suffering and in need of compassion is an admirable sense of humanity and altruism.
Capable of drawing tears from the listener with the sensitivity of the melodies present in tracks such as If These Walls Could Talk, You're Not Alone, Dancing In The Rain and Weight Of The World, Higher Power is an album of strong messages of empowerment, which instills in the listener resilience and emotional balance. In an attempt to incite a sense of the desire to overcome, the album also tries to create, or amplify, trust in the presence and compassion of an omnipresent being, as well as the self-control not to let oneself be led down the path of pain.
Although with the same intent as its older brother The Space Between The Shadows, Higher Power has fewer metallic songs than its predecessor. There are five against four. It doesn't sound like much, but even if they aren't drenched in distortion, the essence of imposition and electricity is less present in the new full-length.
This comparison doesn't make Higher Power any less good, because its sound is just as balanced as its predecessor. With more drama and melancholy, this album explores more of the sentimentality palpable in sadness and insecurity, while gradually offering a kind of healing path for such anguish.
In order to communicate this through sound, Scott Stapp enlisted Joel Wanasek and Chris Baseford for the mixing task. With these professionals at the helm, Higher Power sounded intense and visceral as it moved through introspective atmospheres and explored other layers of Stapp's already traditional alternative metal.
As a link between sound, idea and feeling, Marti Frederiksen, Scott Stevens and KTRASH also joined Stapp in the production. In this way, the album was able to sound authentic in its sentimentality and genuinely altruistic in offering, in addition to a path of encouragement, representation for the pains and afflictions of suffering listeners.
Released on 03/15/2024 via Napalm Records, Higher Power is an intense and visceral Christian album that comes with generous doses of altruism, humanity and sensitivity. As well as representing pain and anguish, it is material that motivates us to find and nurture what is best and strongest within each person, without forgetting the fact that we will never be alone.
