Everything Breaking Benjamin has done has always been so same-y, and this one is no different. I feel like I've already heard this song 50 million times from this band.
Exactly what I said when I heard it. You can literally trace all the similarities. It's like they pulled out all their tricks that got them in the spotlight and slapped them together, thinking "This'll be great!" To highlight this, I'll give you a breakdown: Clean intro lead guitar: Extremely similar to Intro/Outro and The Diary of Jane from Phobia. Way too familiar and worn-out. Clean intro rhythm guitar: Screams Intro/Outro or What Lies Beneath Distorted intro rhythm: Classic BB top string hammer-on and open note progression. We heard it already on Sooner or Later and The Diary of Jane, Ben. Verse rhythm: If this doesn't jump out as The Diary of Jane, you need your ears cleaned Pseudo-solo (aka tremolo picking bridge): This solo could be inserted anywhere on Saturate (cringe) and no one would notice. Bridge rhythm: just slap that somewhere on Dear Agony and it'll sound right at home. The good old open Bb staccato note breakdown. Chorus in general: Almost the same concept as The Diary of Jane in every way. The octaves, the power chords. The lyrics: So many cliché typical BB lines: "Tear the whole world down" sounds very familiar..."I'll burn this whole world down", Had Enough? Wasted breath, letting go, the entire "dark" imagery that was all over Dear Agony, the extremely overused line about something having "just begun". I just wanted to highlight how BB is just using an old basket of tricks in this disappointing song. It does not have my hopes high for the new album. I wanted more awesome and creative songs like Anthem of the Angels, and I got The Diary of Jane Part 2. I find it interesting how people regard Saturate as BB's best. I find Saturate to be their weakest, angstiest, and most uninspired work to date, with the exception of maybe one or two songs.
So you wanted Anthem of the Angels Part 2? Kind of hypocritical. Besides you should wait until the whole album is released before you write off the possibility of an Anthem of the Angels Part 2.
I never said I wanted another Anthem of the Angels, if you actually read my post. I said I wanted another creative song like Anthem of the Angels was. Read carefully. At no point did I say I wanted a song like Anthem of the Angels itself. Anything to try and call someone a hypocrite, huh?
Defeated sucks, sounds just like every other song on Dear Agony, and I hope the mixing on Angels Fall is just because it's a leak. Angels Fall is just slightly above the other two so far. It's still vaguely reminiscent of Away. The intro got my hopes too high.
Defeated is officially out after having been leaked for over a month. Still really hate this song. It's the epitome of rehashed Breaking Benjamin.
Currently, I'm not really feeling any of BB's new stuff. This album so far doesn't really seem like anything really special. Not like the comeback I expected....but that's just my opinion, It may change once I listen to the whole album.
There are maybe 3 songs I really like on this album. The rest literally sound just like other songs they've done. Close to Heaven is freaking Into the Nothing part 2. And Ben's limited vocabulary really shows on this album.
Being a huge fan of Breaking Benjamin years ago, I figured their return would be more impactful. The album isn't horrible but it is very middling and there isn't a single song on the whole thing that stood out to me. Pretty disappointing.
This is why you turn the gain the fuck down when you pile on layers of guitar tracks. Listen to Dear Agony or Phobia, lots of layers with relatively little gain and lots of mids. Angels Fall is a perfect example of scooped mids + high gain + layers = build up of harsh upper harmonics. It's pretty prevalent on all the tracks I've listened to so far (I'm about halfway through the album), and it's made more evident by the EXTREMELY loud mastering. Someone "MEEETAAAAAAALLLLL BROOOO" 'd the intensity out of these tracks. For goodness sakes, on Angels fall the little acoustic interlude near the end is the EXACT same volume as the "heavy shit" that follows it. The distorted fade in is accompanied by an exactly equal fade out of the acoustic. Dark is probably the worst, though. Half way through the song that heavy tom pattern is absolutely crushing every other sound to oblivion. They started it out so loud there's no where else to go. Look up First Light by Starset (into to their new Transmissions album). Very similar concept, but they at least used sounds that fit into their own little spaces and tightened up the bass and panned things around like crazy to save some room. BB needs a new recording engineer. Other than that, I definitely see the Meteora syndrome (take most successful pieces of a prior album and assemble into hit songs). Meteora at least has great mixing and mastering (for the sound they were going for, at least). Maybe Breaking Benjamin should have called up Don Gilmore? They tried to make a breaking benjamin album with a Metallica tone, and it weakens the impact of the music. I don't get punched in the face by these guitars like I do on Lying From You or The Diary of Jane. This shit is post grunge; it's supposed to be an audible sledgehammer, not a knife.
The album was semi disappointing, I guess it's hard to have a "comeback" that is ridiculously good...some of the songs jam but most of them sound the same and the mix isn't that good. However, they were in A+ form at Rock on the Range. Failure live sounded good.
It's what I hate when bands completely replace certain members. It feels like the next album that follows the lineup change always plays it safe and that they're always afraid to truly step out on their own and do their own thing. It happened with STP's High Rise, Evanescence's self titled, Three Days Grace's Human and now Breaking Benjamin's Dark Before Dawn. All enjoyable CD's, and all good review wise, but all terribly safe musically. It's gotten to the point where I almost always look forward to the NEXT album that comes after the new band members joined, because it's typically way better than the 'comeback album'.
To be fair, Ben's always been the primary and, in most cases, solitary songwriter in Breaking Benjamin, with little to no input from the other band members. Their first album, Saturate, credits songwriting to "Breaking Benjamin," although it wouldn't surprise me if he wrote the entire album himself. Their second album, We Are Not Alone, credits "Benjamin Burnley and Breaking Benjamin," but, again, it wouldn't surprise me if he wrote it all himself. Starting with their third album, Phobia, "Breaking Benjamin" isn't credited with songwriting at all; rather, it's Ben who's credited by himself, or as a co-writer with Jasen Rauch, who wasn't even a band member at the time (he's the lead guitarist now). I'm guessing it's well-known at this point that I think Saturate is their best album. It's the only one that sounds like it's got any sort of character to it. Sure, it's angsty and incredibly nu-metally, but I think it's their best-written and most well-rounded album. Ulrich Wild produced that album. Their next three albums, We Are Not Alone, Phobia, and Dear Agony, all sound exactly the same to me; none of the tracks stand out (not even the radio singles). David Bendeth produced all three of those albums, which probably had a huge affect on the way Ben approached his songwriting and I'd be surprised if he didn't learn production from Bendeth. Their new album, Dark Before Dawn, is self-produced by Ben himself, and I'd imagine a big reason why it sounds so safe and similar to everything before it is because that's how Ben's used to writing and that's how he learned how to produce. It's natural that it'd sound similar. (Look at Hybrid Theory and Meteora, as an example: Both were produced by Don Gilmore and both sound extremely similar to each other.) I think what I'm getting at is that Ben was highly influenced by David Bendeth and that's carried over from album to album, but it doesn't have anything to do with Ben replacing all the members of the band. And also the new Three Days Grace album is horrible, if you ask me. edit — Don't get me wrong. I thoroughly enjoy Breaking Benjamin. I just think all their music sounds the same, save for Saturate.