Creed Delivers Sound and Fury, but Just What Does It All Signify?

Creed is big. Creed is loud. The crowds are huge. The sales are massive. But the music. . . . It’s small.

It booms and it rattles, but that’s not nearly enough. At the Hollywood Palladium on Wednesday, Creed demonstrated that for all its high-decibel thunder, there was little of substance to take home once it was over.

Not that this quartet out of Tallahassee, Fla., wasn’t trying. Creed lumbered through songs that explored spirituality and personal fulfillment, drawing on material from its newest chart-topping album, “Human Clay.” But more important, singer Scott Stapp asked on Wednesday, “Are you ready to rock?”

Stapp was ready, in spite of the mostly leaden riffs of guitarist Mark Tremonti. The singer suffers from a Jim Morrison-Eddie Vedder fixation, leading him to wild, exaggerated gestures, mugging frantically at the front of the stage, twitching and stamping to the band’s aimless, formless, charmless bluster.

The irony, as Creed charts another million-selling album, is that as the ‘90s grunge movement once led by Nirvana and Pearl Jam fades from the airwaves, it’s the watered-down likes of Bush and Creed that continue to ride that wave.

Earlier, the Canadian band Our Lady Peace made pop music that was equally loud, but with more memorable results. Inventive if uncomplicated arrangements made the quartet seem like rock gods by comparison.