The Best Of Creed＜限定盤/Red Marbled Vinyl＞

Long before Nickelback and Imagine Dragons became the easy critical targets of their respective generations of modern rock, Tallahassees own Creed held the whipping-boy crown for the millennial Y2K era. With their first three albums, they sold a mind-boggling number of albums -- long before streaming could skew the numbers -- and ruled charts around the globe with their accessible, post-grunge anthems. Yet they couldnt catch a break with critics, highbrow rock fans, or anyone considered more "discerning" in their musical tastes. Decades later, the vitriol had all but dried up and a deep nostalgia had finally set in, both for original fans and new listeners familiar with that epic halftime performance that went viral on social media. At a lean dozen tracks, 2025s The Best of Creed betters their first compilation, 2004s Greatest Hits, with additions from their fourth album 2009s Full Circle. Yet on the other hand, 2015s With Arms Wide Open: A Retrospective – with its additional Rarities & Demos and Acoustic discs – is the most generous of their hits packages to date. Settling in the comfortable middle of the road, The Best of Creed serves the casual fan, one who fondly remembers these massive radio/MTV hits but doesnt feel like picking up their actual albums. Their breakthrough debut – the tortured, Christian-coded My Own Prison, which carried the legacies of grunge-era vets Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, and Stone Temple Pilots – is represented by their heaviest songs ("My Own Prison," "Whats This Life For," and the excellent "Torn"). Bridged by the hard-rocking "What If," the tone shifts for the uplifting Human Clay cuts ("Higher" and "With Arms Wide Open") and similar stadium-sized anthems from their third album Weathered ("One Last Breath," "Hide," and "My Sacrifice"). Full Circle gets some justice with three selections ("Overcome," "Rain," "A Thousand Faces"), spots that arguably could have been filled by more well-known mainstream songs. As it stands, three tracks from each studio album is a fair distribution and this is a fine snapshot of a career that deserves a little more credit than it got at the time of Creeds peak in popularity. ~ Neil Z. Yeung