Review Summary: Breaking Benjamin's post-hiatus LP is a record absolutely devoid of surprises.
Post-grunge, much like hair metal and nu-metal, has had its negative connotations since its inception, but compared to the empty poppiness of Nickelback and Creed or the angst-drenched grunting of Three Days Grace and Seether, Breaking Benjamin had this odd purity to it. Sure, it was by-the-book as far as rock goes, but Breaking Benjamin’s simplicity somehow evaded many of the pitfalls of the easier offenders of the oft-maligned genre. Four albums into their career, frontman Ben Burnley’s health problems and a sketchy legal dispute left the band’s future in uncertainty. In 2009, the band entered a lengthy silence, but with a legal win on his side and the rights to the band in hand, Burnley reformed the band with fresh members and broke back onto the scene.
Dark Before Dawn marks Breaking Benjamin’s first new album in six years and, for better or for worse, the band picks up right where they left off.
Breaking Benjamin has been no stranger to consistency. It’s been just as much a burden as a blessing, leaving a majority of their discography sounding like a giant wave of slamming riffs and Burnley’s singing. Burnley and crew rarely stepped outside of their comfort zone during their career, and
Dark Before Dawn doesn’t do much to signify that trend from ending. The typical radio hit “Failure” has an almost annoyingly simple structure (though, admittedly, has a nice little melodic chorus in tow), but this trend seeps into the other tracks as well. This structure of a cool simmering verse leading to a crushing riff-fest chorus is the band’s most prominent technique, something they’ve worked into their blood over the course of their entire career. It’ll definitely get the heads banging, but when an entire album is using this single ideology, the wrinkles start to appear. This is made more annoying in dull-as-dirt tracks like “Bury Me Alive” and “Angels Fall”, two tracks that are devoid of anything close to a change-up, even by Breaking Benjamin’s standards.
Fortunately, Breaking Benjamin’s nauseating overuse of this song structure is remedied with Burnley’s singing and the occasional melodic deviation. You’ll hear some nicely abrasive solos in “Breaking the Silence”, a good little complement to the
Saturate-esque tempo. “Hollow” is a bit brighter of a song, also having a little solo in between Burnley’s cleaner vocals. In fact, the vocals from Ben do take cues from the better portions of later albums like
Phobia and
Dear Agony. Sure, guttural growls appear, but the calmer melodies from Burnley take a majority of the vocals. This singing style has kept Breaking Benjamin from succumbing to the pitfalls that other bands like Nickelback and Three Days Grace have fallen into, or at the very least, not succumbing to them as much.
Expecting anything particularly inventive from Breaking Benjamin is probably harder than expecting it from any other post-grunge band, as their near idolization of tradition has become so much easier to detect over time. It makes the extremely rare bits of intrigue all the more precious. “Close to Heaven” is a smoother track with a pace similar to “Dance With the Devil” from
Phobia, while the more ballad-y “The Great Divide” is a soar off the terrible “Never Again.” “Ashes of Eden” manages to change things up the most on the LP, with a much softer dynamic, mixing balladry with a slightly faster pace than other Breaking Benjamin ballads like
We Are Not Alone’s “Rain.” It’s these moments that shine the brightest on
Dark Before Dawn, despite being buried under a painfully repetitive style of post-grunge monotony.
Breaking Benjamin’s comeback album is a reminder both of the band’s hard rock tradition and their total inability to deviate from it. With such a proud emphasis on radio friendliness, it is admirable for the band to command their music so well, but this obsession with consistency makes their return more disappointing than it should be. For everything the band has been through since 2009, I honestly expected something,
anything more than what
Dark Before Dawn delivers. But even with that cloud hovering above, Breaking Benjamin’s music is still a decent example of modern alt rock. Consistency included, Ben Burnley’s voice is a nice balance of croon and growl, and those brief moments of melody manage to shine through the debris.
Dark Before Dawn is everything a fan would want Breaking Benjamin to be, but for everyone else who expected something substantial to rise from the tense hiatus, you won’t find a single surprise here.
