Concert Photos: Creed Put on a Helluva Show at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse in Cleveland

Hard Rock outfit Creed played Rocket Mortgage Field House to a throng of 15,000 fans on Friday night. In tow were support acts Mammoth WVH and Mississippi-based 3 Doors Down.

Mammoth, fronted by Wolfgang Van Halen, shredded through a six-song set, starting the evening off at a punctual 7:00. The prodigal son of one of Rock’s greatest guitarists, Wolfie has become a phenomenal axe grinder, ably filling the shoes left by his dad.

Next up was Brad Arnold’s 3 Doors Down. Arnold, the only original member of the band still involved, came to the stage sporting a black “Jesus” t-shirt and a long mullet. Offering up a twelve-song set, their time onstage concluded with their two biggest hits, “Kryptonite” and “When I’m Gone.”

Starting close to 9:00, Scott Stapp and company lit up the crowd with a phenomenal lighting package and an honest-to-God, good-ole-fashioned pyro display that would put any KISS show to shame.

Playing for a good hundred minutes, they tore through sixteen songs, in between Stapp’s proselytizing between numbers. While Creed doesn’t consider itself a Christian band, much of the banter between Stapp and the audience involved an invocation of a higher power. Stapp’s stage presence seems to be a cross between a Sunday morning Pentecostal preacher and a WWE wrestler hamming it up in the ring at Summer Slam.

Both Stapp and Arnold have had issues with substance abuse in their pasts; their not-so-subtle, unapologetic amalgam of heavier, guitar-driven riffs with theological bents adorning a higher power have morphed into a new type of Southern Rock. Much like “Yacht Rock” describes the lighter, poppy sound of late ’70s and early ’80s artists like Dan Fogelberg, Michael McDonald, and Christopher Cross, could this sub-genre, full of atonement and a healthy dose of fear for their place in the Afterlife, be dubbed “Addiction Rock?”

Nonetheless, Creed put on a hell of a show.