On Weathered, Creed's lucid powerhouse of a third album, the Orlando, Florida, trio emerge as masters of hard-rock atmosphere. As Soundgarden proved with Superunknown, there are a million little intricacies to pulling off what sounds like big enormous rock. And Creed are all over them: Weathered is rock of unusual focus and arrest, a beautifully distressed dance of sustained style and unapologetic emotion.

On songs such as "Who's Got My Back?" and "My Sacrifice," the current single, Creed (now without bassist Brian Marshall) issue exhilarating blasts of sculpted guitar. Mark Tremonti's playing and Scott Stapp's gorgeously able tenor-baritone cohere with striking symmetry and synchronicity. Ironically, for a band known by its critics for its overblown romanticism, what's remarkable about Creed's album is its rich restraint. Stapp remains a man who could sing for the stage, so long as he could wear leather pants. But he and Tremonti don't rely on particularly catchy melodies or cheesy monster riffs; they just talk to each other - patiently, intensely, musically - with a connected confidence.

Creed take nothing lightly, or for granted. On "Stand Here With Me," Stapp sings his earnest lyrics as if he might be cross-examined on the import of every word. His voice cuts against an edgy, restless bed of Tremonti's guitar notes before the guitarist changes his rhythm, and Stapp sings, "So now you live on in the words of a song/You're a melody," as the music gets more frenetic. Where other bands might have lightened up their tone by their third album, Creed keep exploring the intricacies of their own heavy-rock calibrations. Time and again on the album - as the title tune rocks out slyly, or during the harmonic churning of "Hide" - Creed obviously take pleasure in their command of these details.

Weathered crests with "Don't Stop Dancing," a song that begins with Stapp declaring how "wicked" and murky life sometimes is. Tremonti starts up with the Creed equivalent of strumming - a bunch of slightly metallic-sounding chords swiftly voiced, accumulating a spectacular sonic rush. On the choruses, Stapp implores - and you really have to hear it with the music - "Children, don't stop dancing/Believe you can fly." It's a post-post-metal gospel song for a post-post-Cold War world, a totally credible soundtrack in the grand rock tradition of virtuosity and romance.

JAMES HUNTER