The making of rock band Alter Bridge [ tickets ]'s sophomore effort was especially challenging. The members of the act, which includes Creed's rhythm section, felt the need to forget about their past and create a whole new sound.

"This time around, the only thing we had in the back of our minds was not to sound anything like our past," said guitarist Mark Tremonti during an interview with LiveDaily backstage at Tempe, AZ's Marquee Theatre. "If we came out with a song that sounded like something we had done in our past, we'd cut it out right away. On our last album, we were one step away from [sounding like Creed]. Now, we're hopefully all the way from it. It gets tougher to write as you go. You can't repeat what you've done. With us, there's a whole sound we have to avoid. It's hard to get rid of."

The result is the album "Blackbird," the follow up to 2004's gold-certified "One Day Remains," which spawned the Creed-like anthemic hits "Open Your Eyes," "Find the Real" and "Broken Wings." A Michigan native who writes music and lyrics, Tremonti describes the new set as heavier than its predecessor but still melodic.

"Of course, the record label wanted the big radio song. 'Watch Over You' is the last song we put together for the record," said Tremonti, who is joined in the band by fellow ex-Creed members Brian Marshall (bass) and Scott Phillips (drums), as well as former Mayfield Four singer Myles Kennedy.

"The good thing about 'Watch Over You' is it's a ballad-type song, but most of it came from Myles so it doesn't have the Creed stamp on it. Myles had most of the song written before Alter Bridge started. We got together, and now we use the bridge I had written with his song and it came together really quickly. That was the moment when the record label was really excited about the record, when they heard that song. "

For "Blackbird," the band worked with producer Michael "Elvis" Baskette, for whom Alter Bridge tore down its musical walls.

"We've never really had our guard way down like we did on this record," Tremonti said. "It's the first time we went into preproduction with a producer. We played a song and let him rip into it. It was good because we had these songs written for so long--there's a three-year period between records. You lose that initial excitement of the song. You don't realize what parts are dragging anymore because you're so used to the song. So it's good for him to come in and say, 'Love the song. Hate the bridge.' We said, 'I don't hate you for saying that. I'm glad you're saying that.' We need that outside opinion. He'd say those things and me and Myles would break out our laptops with all our ideas logged. It was another filter for those songs. He was very big on keeping the energy up in the songs. We're notorious for taking the bridge and dragging it out to this big long drawn out epic bridge. Sometimes it doesn't serve the song as well as just keeping the energy up."

Not only is this the band's first album with a new sound; "Blackbird" is the group's first with its new management and new record label. Tremonti said they left Wind-Up Records for Universal Republic because they were "slugging it out on our own."

"You can't survive in the rock world right now without help from the record label," Tremonti said. "We were pretty much out there on tour by ourselves. We needed support so we bought off our deal, which took forever to come to terms with our old record label.

"We actually recorded the album when we didn't have a record deal. We were almost to mixing the record before we ever signed a record deal. There was a big moment in time where we had no management. We had no record deal. It was just us four against the world not knowing what the hell was going to happen. We definitely believe in ourselves or else we wouldn't have ever gone down that route."