It’s been a while since I last felt motivated to write
something. And I apologize to those of you that enjoyed reading my reviews.
Those of you that know me are aware that Opeth is the only reason that Breaking
Benjamin is not still my favorite band. Taking my undying love for this band
into consideration, when this album was announced, I told myself that I was not
going to let that cause me to just blindly love this album just because of who
wrote/performed it. I was lucky enough to see Breaking Benjamin live at the
fucking top of their game with their full previous lineup. Unfortunately, it
was the last tour that lineup would ever do together. I’m not going to spend a
lot of time going over what happened after that tour, but long story short,
everyone except for their frontman and songwriter exited the band (two were
fired, one left voluntarily). That was in 2010; five fucking years ago.
Fast-forward to this year, Benjamin Burnley had obviously written a shitload of
material during that hiatus, and has now completely rebuilt the lineup. The
million dollar question begs what the hell the new Breaking Benjamin was going
to sound like.
To be honest, I wasn’t exactly too optimistic about Ben
completely re-creating the lineup. The musicianship and talent of the
individual members was a huge part of my love and respect for this band. Especially
that of bassist Mark and drummer Chad. But that all started to change as my
doubt gradually turned into slight optimism and intrigue, starting with a
YouTube video of Shaun Foist playing some Breaking Benjamin covers. Why this
guy? Well about half of those videos had “Breaking Benjamin drummer performing (insert
BB song title)” as the title of the video. He managed to capture and properly
maintain the chaotic and technical drumming style that has been tied to all of
Breaking Benjamin’s previous albums. But of course, those were just covers. I
can cover songs by The Black Dahlia Murder on bass guitar, but that doesn’t
mean I have the ability to write something of that level. So although I wasn’t
fully convinced, I was a little less worried about the future of their sound as
far as the drums go.
Then of course, in April, Hollywood Records posted the first
new Breaking Benjamin song in over 6 years; Failure. No one had any idea what
it was going to sound like. My main concern was that they would turn into
another power-chord driven radio rock band because all of the musicians that
Ben had recruited came from a radio rock background. But really, to my
surprise, this sounds EXACTLY like the old lineup. I actually cannot tell the
difference between the two lineups. And this made me realize how much Ben
really does write; this is his work. Hearing this song was not only a huge
refresher, but proof that Breaking Benjamin is truly back and was never going
to die out.
The first album reviews I ever wrote (back in 2009) were of
the first 4 Breaking Benjamin albums, believe it or not. And six years later,
after all of my reviewing experience, with the announcement of this new album, I
re-visited the band’s discography from a reviewer’s perspective and realized
things about them that I (obviously) didn’t fully have a grasp on back in 2009.
Some things I will touch on in this review, but there’s one in particular that
I’m going to spend some time talking about because I don’t think that many
people understand this about Breaking Benjamin unless it is clearly explained
to them, despite it being right in front of their fucking faces.
Alternative metal is such an interesting genre; bands
walking the line between hard rock/grunge and heavy metal as if it were some
sort of tightrope. Some bands, like Crossfade, Three Days Grace, Cold, and CKY
favoring the rock side much more, but still implementing distortion heavy
enough and breakdowns dark enough to be considered metal by some. Then there’s
the bands that are much more metal than rock, such as Avenged Sevenfold (no,
not including their first two albums), Trapt, Seether, Taproot, and Wovenwar.
Breaking Benjamin is the most unique out of all of these.
Instead of having a mix of some metal songs and heavy rock
songs, Breaking Benjamin perfectly weaves through the two, crossing the line
between the two styles multiple times in a single song. It’s impossible
sometimes to decide what they play because they will start a song off with one
of the heaviest riffs you’ve ever heard that fucking crushes you into the
pavement before sliding into a verse that sounds like a generic radio rock
song. There are bands that do that, but nowhere near the level and cleanness
that these guys do.
Another thing that makes Breaking Benjamin stand out from
the rest of these mainstream metal and rock acts is the complexity. Yes,
Seether and Taproot are great, but let’s be honest; they’re using simple drum
pattern, generic song structures, and power chords. Now take Breaking Benjamin
and listen to the level of complexity in the instrumentation compared to their
contemporaries. Not only does this just make the music more interesting, it
gives it substance and makes it a hell of a lot heavier. That, I think, is
fucking metal. The only radio rock thing about these guys is the
mainstream-friendly song structures and the melodic verses. Other than that,
with the exception of a few songs here and there, what they play is too heavy
and too dark for me to call rock. I can’t listen to Evil Angel and Had Enough
and fucking call that shit rock, I just can’t.
Back to my original point, though, this band..well…Benjamin
Burnley himself has one of the most diverse and colorful musical palettes the
world has ever heard. Yes, they always tour with other mainstream rock acts,
yes the majority of their fanbase groups them in with those bands, but they are
so much more than that. The sheer power and color of their music is far more
emotional and heavy than all of these other bands. The level of creativity
overpowers every other band in their genre, whatever you consider them to be.
It’s just not something I can just simply ignore right now.
As I said before, instrumentally, this sounds exactly like
Breaking Benjamin. It’s kind of hard to fully wrap my head around how perfectly
Ben fucking pulled this off. First, Breaking Benjamin is now a five-piece. Wait?
Their music has always been vocals/rhythm guitar (Ben), bass, lead guitar, and
drums, right? Yeah, except here’s what the new lineup is: vocals/rhythm guitar
(Ben), lead guitar, rhythm guitar/backing vocals, bass/backing vocals, and
drums. So they went from having one vocalist and two guitars to having three
vocalists and three guitars. I don’t know what’s with all of these bands having
three guitarists nowadays but whatever, I guess if it makes you happy. Maybe he
has an extra rhythm guitarist for further complexity in the guitar section or
to just simply have a stronger brick wall behind the lead guitarist…the world
may never know why these bands have three guitarists (other bands include
Whitechapel and Periphery). Obviously Ben still does the lead vocals, but
instead of harmonizing with himself, he has two other people harmonizing with
him, which could probably end up sounding very…uncomfortable (I can’t think of
a good word, it just wouldn’t sound right). But truth be told, you can’t even
fucking tell that the harmonizing singers are someone other than Ben. It’s
starting to freak me out how perfectly he’s managed to pull this together.
The styles of vocal harmony that appear in many of the songs
are very similar to the ones heard in Lights Out from Dear Agony. I don’t know
what the word is for it but it’s very unique and works really well with Ben’s
voice. But there’s a lot of playing around with that style of harmony in songs
like Breaking the Silence, Close to Heaven, and Bury Me Alive. After watching a
few recent live videos, it seems that the main backing vocalist is the bassist,
Aaron Bruch. But because of Aaron’s (I’m assuming it’s him) higher range and
Keith’s lower range, the vocals are all over the fucking place on this album,
making it much more interesting and unexpected for the listener.
Something that’s also being brought back from the We are not
Alone and Phobia days is breakdowns. Yes, I know they’re not the type of
breakdowns you’d hear from a deathcore band, and that’s because (surprise!)
Breaking Benjamin is not a deathcore band! But in just about all of the songs,
there is a nice crunchy breakdown towards the end. Once again, a major METAL
element that they use in their sound.
This album is unbelievable beyond what I can conceive. I
love everything about it. I honestly didn’t get my hopes up too high with this
whole new lineup thing; I didn’t think Ben would pull through. But he fucking
did, and together as a band they have managed to pick up right where they left
off six years ago without losing ANY ground what so ever. Breaking Benjamin is
a band that can satisfy both metal and rock fans alike. They have the heaviness
and complexity of a metal band while also having the traditional song structure
and verse styles of a rock band. This is by far one of the best comeback albums
ever released and gets a perfect 20/20 score from me.
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