Whenever anyone asked what the next record was going to sound like, Tremonti would reply that it was going to be more of what they did on Human Clay. "We always told [people] that we were gonna push our limits. The heavier stuff was gonna be twice as heavy, and the ballads were gonna be twice as pretty and soft." Which is exactly the way it turned out, as Weathered offers both the heaviest track Creed’s ever done ("Bullets") and the lightest ("Lullaby," which Stapp wrote to lull little Jagger to sleep).

"Who writes Christmas carols?" Tremonti wonders aloud. "Who writes lullabies? Why couldn’t a modern [band] try and do one? It’s so not our style that it’s kind of cool that we’ve branched out to do it."

Expanding on previous benchmarks isn’t anything new for Creed. If My Own Prison represented a marriage of Tremonti’s ’80s-metal-infected riffs and Stapp’s proclivity for tackling lofty lyrical themes such as unity, personal responsibility, and brotherly love, Human Clay took those same elements to another plane. In a sense, Creed’s sound has always been tantamount to having Bono join Metallica, and with Weathered, the biggest band in rock raises the bar yet another notch.

Most fans were introduced to the new album by "My Sacrifice," a big, mid-tempo guitar workout that seems sure to incite more than a few flick-your-Bic moments whenever the band plays it live. "When you are with me, I’m free…I’m careless…I believe," Stapp’s baritone booms in the chorus. The song tells of a reunion with an old friend, making its title line seem like a non-sequitur. Where’s the sacrifice in happily spending time with an old friend? Or is it, in fact, an old friend at all?

"He was reconnecting with himself," Tremonti says of the tune’s basic premise. "After all the chaos over the past years and years of people judging, and being in the whirlwind of what we’re doing, [Scott was] finally being calm and at peace with himself, finding himself again."

Other Weathered tracks worth noting include the heavy rocker "Freedom Fighter," which sounds like it was written in the aftermath of the attacks on America. In fact, the song was written well before Sept. 11, lending Stapp’s lyrics ("I’m just a freedom fighter, no remorse / Raging on a holy war") an eerie resonance. "Who’s Got My Back?" features a Cherokee chief singing a tribal prayer for peace and prosperity, while "Stand" is a quick-paced rocker in the "Higher" vein, and "Weathered" comes off like an old Western movie score remade with a big, booming chorus.