ALTER BRIDGE's MARK TREMONTI: 'I Don't Believe In Organized Religion'

Pitcam TV recently conducted an interview with ALTER BRIDGE guitarist Mark Tremonti. You can watch the entire chat below. A few excerpts follow (transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET).

On the writing process for the band's new studio album, "Walk The Sky":

Mark: "Me and Myles [Kennedy, vocals] wrote our own songs on our own, then we put them into Dropbox so the band could hear it. Usually, me and Myles get together and piece our ideas together, we write together, but this time we wrote apart and came together with the rest of the band and let everybody put their two cents into it. We came into the studio with much more well-rounded, polished, finished ideas, which is different than we usually do."

On the spirituality of the members of ALTER BRIDGE:

Mark: "I think we're all spiritual in our own different ways. I don't believe in organized religion. [Laughs] I don't take strictly to what the bible says. I don't go to church, but I have my own beliefs. When I write lyrics, it has nothing really to do with that. I wrote a song about drug use; I wrote a song about my friend passing away; just random things."

On how ALTER BRIDGE decides whether Tremonti will sing lead vocals on a song:

Mark: "Some people online were, like, 'Is Mark going to sing on another song? We liked it when he sang on 'Fortress', but he didn't on 'The Last Hero'. People talk. I'm always down for singing; I love to sing. Even when I'm not on stage, I sing karaoke for fun. [Laughs] I love to sing. The pressure is not on me as a singer because I'm thought of mostly as a guitar player, but I love to sing. I write vocal melodies — it's my favorite thing to do. When we were putting the songs together, Myles was, like, 'Hey, why don't you sing a song? How about 'Forever Falling' or 'Tear Us Apart'?' 'Forever Falling' is one of my favorites. We had to take the song and pitch it down a whole step. I wrote the melodies, but I write the melodies [mimics vocals] so I can hit the 'Myles note.' I tuned it down and when I went to sing it, even tuned down, the melody I had written for the chorus went up too high for my voice, so Myles sings the chorus and I sing the rest. I like it that way. It's a marriage of our voices."

On whether "Walk The Sky" is the "heaviest" album of ALTER BRIDGE's career:

Mark: "I don't know if it's the heaviest. 'Fortress' and 'AB III' are just heavy. A few people today have said it's heavy. It's funny, some people are, like, 'It's more of an uplifting record. It's not as dark as what you've done.' Then we did an interview where they said, 'This is probably your darkest record.' It depends on where you gravitate in the record. Wherever you're drawn to. If 'Indoctrination' is your favorite song, it's a dark record. If 'Tear Us Apart' or 'Godspeed' is, it's more positive."

On whether his solo band, TREMONTI, and Kennedy's gig in SLASH WITH MYLES KENNEDY AND THE CONSPIRATORS have influenced ALTER BRIDGE:

Mark: "In a roundabout way, I'm sure it does. Doing that's made me a stronger or more confident lyricist and singer and composer. When you take on the entire responsibility of something for so many records, it makes you 'I can do this.' Sometimes when you're in a band even for years, you fall into a role and you only play that role. Once you take on all those roles in your solo project, you feel confident in tackling anything that's thrown at you."

"Walk The Sky" was released on October 18 via Napalm Records.

ALTER BRIDGE recently completed a co-headlining tour with SKILLET.