Dark Before Dawn by Breaking Benjamin | Teen Ink

Dark Before Dawn by Breaking Benjamin

June 20, 2015
By theheavymetalist ELITE, Winter Haven, Florida
theheavymetalist ELITE, Winter Haven, Florida
247 articles 0 photos 57 comments

Favorite Quote:
Take me As I Am - James Labrie of Dream Theater


I think I should mention something now. This Breaking Ben's comeback album after six years of no new material released. I will explain what I think of it in the main body as usual. Now to the review I promised you.

Breaking Benjamin is a hard rock band that have been around since the turn of the millinia and have been releasing mostly consistent material since Saturate, their debut. As their third album began to unfold, Phobia was a bit different in sound when compared to the previous two. Having more of a metalcore type sound to it and acquiring more radio hits as well. I have reviewed Dear Agony which is a decent album as well and is also furthering this style. Now they have an almost entirely different band with Ben Burnley still the frontman and the only original member. The new guitarist also has some decent shredding skills and have screams that can rival any melodic metalcore band of today.
While the last to albums catered toward metalcore, this album caters towards something more of atmosphere and space rock. It still has the relative spirit of the last two though. For example, the longest track is in favor of Anthem of the Angels, Without You and Dear Agony. Angels Fall has elements of Evil Angel and Breath and so on. Of course this shows that they haven't strayed too far from an root that the have had. Now, if you remember either Halo 2 or Blow Me Away, well I think you can see where this is going. If you remember that song, think of this album as Blow Me Away tenfold with more space atmosphere. The name of the album could also be heavily symbolic much like Phobia. It could mean the struggle of keeping the band alive and together, or to the fact that now the band has come back but this is not going to be their best work from here. Either way, the start is the dark and the end is the light(don't you just love things like this?). The setup of the album is fairly similar to Phobia where on the book ends we have transitional tracks much like the Intro and Outro of Phobia. Yeah, you can sense some unoriginality here and that isn't exactly the best thing In the world, but you can't exactly expect them to pull it out after a comeback and with brand new members either so we'll have to wait. Meanwhile, sense the atmosphere that is present within all of the hard rocking songs as well. You may notice something you didn't know from before. This also fringelines metalcore even more so with the new guitarist who can create more feral screams than Ben ever could previously, though don't show up too often either.
I will say, not their best, but it is a trip. I give this an 8/10. I am the Grim Reaper, signing off.


Similar Articles

JOIN THE DISCUSSION

This article has 0 comments.