Perhaps some of my best childhood memories involve listening to Breaking Benjamin and playing Halo 2. Thus, Breaking Benjamin will always have a soft spot in my heart. There is something so likable about some of their material, and while I don't necessarily think that they have ever reinvented the wheel, they are definitely much more interesting than anything else going on in modern rock (Five Finger Death Punch should stop making music). I really appreciate a great deal of their older material, mainly their first and second albums, Saturate and We Are Not Alone, but most of that is probably nostalgia.
I have heard the two lead singles for Ember - "Red Cold River" and "Feed the Wolf" - on my local mainstream station many times in the past few months and was honestly shamelessly incredibly excited. Breaking Benjamin is certainly my mainstream rock guilty pleasure, so to hear them actually using some interesting harmonies and different production certainly got me excited. I was happy to hear some singles that were heavy and not... sappy. I hate the sappy, wimpy emotional choruses that Breaking Benjamin songs often contain, especially present in song "Angels Fall".
These two singles just happen to be the first few songs on the album (after a meaningless intro track). I really appreciate what these songs did with the use of unclean vocals at certain points, which Ben has done in the past, but he actually uses them more often on these two songs than I think I have ever heard him do before. At the same time, he also uses some interesting harmonizing clean vocals that he has also used before, but never to this extent. These two singles were truly excellently produced as well, as can be expected by a band with this kind of budget, yet the production was above that of many of their peers in the pool of radio rock mediocrity. The mixing was excellent, with the bass being audible and present, guitar tone being on point, and drums having the right amount of punch needed to support the rest of the band. The music - in terms of composition - doesn't really push any boundaries, but that's not really expected with singles anyhow.
The next song, "Tourniquet" keeps this track record up, with a great chorus and interesting lead-rhythm guitar play, something I loved about old Breaking Benjamin but haven't really noticed since Aaron Fink left the band. I like this song a lot, with it being one of my favorites from the album.
"Psycho" starts off great, but then goes into about a half-sappy chorus that doesn't bother me nearly as much as the atrocious lyrics. I know Breaking Benjamin is known to be repetitive with topics and lyrics, but for Christ's sake, "Into the hollow I let go / I see the darkness close in / Into the silence I become / I am the faith forsaken" is the most worthless combination of words I have ever read. At this point, I will take anything over anything that features "silence" or "darkness" or "hollow". That being said, this song does have redeeming factors in its instrumental elements. This band does have a problem with ripping riffs from itself, or simply rearranging older riffs in order to fertilize the soil that cultivates their new riffs, which is evident in this song.
The next track "The Dark of You", is even worse. This one is quite sappy, quite quiet, and once again features pretty horrible lyrics.
"Let go / When all has come to life / We live, we breathe, we die / They call me to the light / Forever lost in time / With every dream we find / We feed, we burn, we lie / The fall of humankind
The everlasting light"
YIKES.
"Down" is pretty much Breaking Benjamin by the numbers: pretty harmless and repetitive, half sap/ half heavy. Not much to be said about this one, except that the repetitive lyrics strike again. Ben mentions being buried alone, which made me realize how much this man is obsessed with either being buried or just the word bury. Here are some examples:
"Failure" : "We bury the sunlight"
"Feed the Wolf" : "Bury me in the cold light"
"Bury Me Alive" : .... "Bury me alive" duh?
"Down" : "Faceless and buried alone"
Keep in mind, all of these were exclusively from this album and the last.
Ben seems to be obsessed with other words as well, such as "light", "cold", "life", "broken", "bleed" and "crawl".
There goes my childhood.
"Torn in Two" is not bad. Kinda repetitive in its structure, but one of the better songs on this album. Again, Ben mentions some of his words, perhaps quite humorously, one of the lines is "Broken, I crawl back to life". The album, solely based on the lyrics, gets to be kind of laughable at this point. The music is solid, perhaps the only redeeming factor, as Ben isn't even using any of those interesting vocal techniques earlier mentioned. I do like the way he sings "two" however, kind of a random element to point out, but I'm really trying to stay positive here guys.
"Bleed" makes me furious, solely because of the opening riff. This riff is nearly identical to a riff from Love and Death's debut album, the opening riff from "Watching the Bottom Fall". Taking into consideration that Jason helped produce Love and Death's album, this is understandable, but still not excusable. I can understand ripping off a riff from your own band, but this really seems to be recycling in the worst kind of way.
"Save Yourself" is below average and contains more lyrics about dying. A fun noodley riff is present, yet this just sounds like something I have heard before.
"Close Your Eyes" is decent. I like the near-end song breakdown, as it definitely throws a wrench in their formulaic strong structure, but this is offset by "hold on, just hold on" being a key portion of the chorus, when Ben was crooning about holding on two songs before in "Torn in Two". They don't even reincorporate these ideas in an interesting way, they just reuse them shamelessly. It's kind of pathetic.
"Vega" the instrumental outro, is one of the most interesting songs on the album. If the entire album sounded like this instrumental outro, I would dig it.
I was really looking forward to this album, but it fell victim to cliches, repetitive lyrics, boring composition, and no sense of direction. I enjoyed the heavier direction, production, and mixing, as well as the first three songs, but that's about it.
3.9/10
Nice Review Bro,
ReplyDeleteThough I don't completely agree with you opinion you did a great job analyzing but a few things I must say, and don't take em the wrong way but hear me out and then relisten to the album
But I will preface with I know you like the harder rock music so I get why you don't like this album as much but still hear me out.
1) I don't know if this is sulpsupp to be a concept album but you can go with that mindset and use the material from the "Red Cold River" and "Torn in Two" music videos and think about it that way
2) look up Lyra and Vega and the connecting Greek Mythology and then relisten to "Close Your Eyes" specifically
http://www.constellation-guide.com/constellation-list/lyra-constellation/
I get that yiy don't like the "sappy" music they write but whenever they do a calmer smooth song like "The Dark Of You" it shows Ben Burnleys vocal skill plus it gives a more intimate tone to ir. I kinda understand what you mean when you say the lyrics aren't good but look at it from the poinp of view of an individual who was optimistic but then sees how dark and colluded the world is, hell you could go back to the concept album idea and imagine it is the father saying this after he loses his daughter and sees how broken the world is and how he must also change for the worse to survive, "Let Go/We know this kind of life/we live, we breathe we die/they call me to the light/forever lost in time/ with every dream we fight/We Feed, We Burn, We Like/The fall of humankind/
The everlasting light/Fade away to the wicked world we left/And I become the dark of you/
Say a prayer for the wounded heart within as I become the dark of you"
To respond to a few of your points:
Delete1) I can't consider music videos in a music review. I often include them at the bottom of my reviews simply to display the music itself, but it would be unfair to take them into consideration when reviewing an album. Considering how generic these tracks are, especially in accordance with their previous work, it would be extremely hard for me to believe that this is a concept album. When I think concept album I think The Wall, Abigail, or even Good Kid Maad City.
2)To respond to your point about "The Dark of You", this song actually features Derek Hough which is why the vocals sound the way they do. Also, no matter what point of view I look at this song, or entire album as, I can't help but think they need to try something new. They certainly need to step away from the formula.
Also, I don't dislike this album because I like metal, I dislike this album because it's generic and produced a riff that is virtually identical to another riff I had heard. I listen to alot more than just metal: two rap albums were in my top 10 for 2016, I gave Alela Diane's (a singer-songwriter) new album a 6.9, and I regularly listen to many other genres (new wave, indie, hip-hop). While reviews obviously reflect my tastes, I attempt to be as objective as possible.
DeleteAdditionally, "Save Yourself is kind of an interesting song to listen to because he indirectly references multiple previous songs in his lyrics
ReplyDelete1)"When the Venom Crawls inside"(Crawl)
2)"When the fire fills our eyes"(Ember album Art, yeah not a previous song, but still)
3)"Love lies hopeless"(Hopeless)
4)"When the Devil Comes Alive"(Dance with the Devil
5)"So Save Yourself"(Without You)
6)"My dying Breath"(Breath)
7)"I keep this prayer alive"(Defeated)
8)"Rain is closing"(Rain)
9)"When the Hollow fills our Eyes"(Hollow)
10)""When the Heart and Soul Divide"(The Great Divide)
11)"I'll leave this world behind"(unknown solider)
I know these mY seem like weak connections but I just finished d it interesting to look at the song from that perspective
I don't really think that he is referencing songs intentionally,but rather recycling ideas. As I discussed, Ben has a VERY limited vocabulary. I have come to the point where I can no longer give him the benefit of the doubt.
Delete