Review Summary: The sound of heaven, if it had a terrible mix.
For all intents and purposes
Aurora is, at the very least, a cute idea. If
Aurora slipped under your radar, a quick synopsis would go something like this: it’s a pseudo-celebration that reimagines some of Breaking Benjamin’s “biggest” songs with the concept of Aurora in mind. Aurora, for those unaware, is the name penned to the famous Aurora Borealis and Aurora Australis light shows – or as they’re more commonly known, the Northern and Southern Lights. It’s earth’s natural light show, caused by electrically charged particles that break away from the sun and get caught up in the earth’s atmosphere; earth’s gases burn away at these particles and thus create the astonishing lights and colours we see from the Aurora. If you’re wondering why I’m turning this into a science lesson, the point I’m ultimately making is the Aurora theme fits with Breaking Benjamin’s current aesthetics pretty faithfully. 2018’s
Ember mainly centres around humanity’s self-destruction and failures, but astrology, space and science fiction play a pertinent role in delivering these motifs. So, the very nature of
Aurora taking this ethereal design feels like a well-suited successor to
Ember, and one that could bring a different feeling to these once familiar songs.
Ember’s finest track “The Dark of You” is a cordial embrace of this type of sound, so on paper it seems fairly obvious that I would bask in
Aurora’s tranquillity, and adulate the band for diverting their creativity into a much-needed new direction.
Aurora’s proclivity for taking hard-hitting chug numbers like “Tourniquet” and “Red Cold River” and stripping them down to skeletal, acoustic husks is a neat idea. However, this isn’t the first time we’ve had this stripped back approach to songs; the band’s 2004 EP
So Cold had a really raw and impassioned version of “So Cold” – a bristly rendition that holds my favourite vocal performance from any of the available versions. In spite of the raw sound quality, it stands to be a really great highlight: it’s literally just Ben and the acoustic backing of his band, pouring his soul into the song to deliver a different viewpoint of the track. Which, frankly, is all you can ask for from this type of style. With that being said, for those expecting the same level of passion and melodic variety here, prepare to be somewhat disappointed. It seems the focus here fell onto crafting a pristine, production-heavy polish around these lean templates, rather than correlating ideas that could have changed the dynamic of a song with organic means. As a result, there was a detachment that came from listening to these songs the more I went back to them. I’ll openly admit that my preference for the
So Cold version of “So Cold” is more favourable, simply because Ben’s vocal performance is far more emotionally charged. Less is more, and for all the bells and whistles you can throw at a track these days – depending on the context – for me it always boils down to the human element a song brings. But considering the nature of this LP, which centres around vocals and acoustic instruments, there’s a surprising disconnect from that element here.
So I’ll get straight to brass tacks; the biggest problem with
Aurora is, ironically, its production. When you’re putting all your eggs into one basket, you had better make sure the handle doesn’t break. For a record that’s ostensibly stripped back, the amount of ideas being thrown into this dense soup is eye bulging. The mixing in particular is unserviceable, flat, heedless and damages a lot of the potential these tracks could have had. The biggest detriment, if you can overlook the string and acoustic instruments merging together like a Society orgy party, is the guest vocal spots, which inadvertently deprive the songs of their vibe and true potential. Like most of the pieces here, “Red Cold River” starts off instrumentally meagre but eventually swells right up to a chorus representative of a canvas with too much paint spattered onto it; myriads of harmonies, melodies, strings and instruments spilling into one another, muddling the narrative and leaving you at a loss on where to put your attention. It also doesn’t help matters when Spencer Chamberlain’s whiny performance clashes against Ben’s with calamitous results. But then, the same goes for most of the additional vocalists here who are, to put it bluntly, hindrances to the tracks. There’s an alternative version of “Far Away” which proves the point that these guest-supported versions do more damage than good. While the song itself is far from perfect – being the only new song on here, and one that suffers horribly from the dreaded and stale dark-and-light lyrical mantra he’s shackled to – its simplicity for having Ben solely at the helm, vocally, works wonders for the tone and execution of the track.
I’ve never been a fan of the production to their last couple of records, they sound muddy and dense for all the wrong reasons, but I don’t really understand how they can mess up a sound designed to be humble and earthly. It’s not even so much the guests’ fault that they sound
off, blame needs to be put on how it was all pieced together. The overall sound to
Aurora is sterile, flaccid and muddled, it’s that simple. Sure, the band successfully make an aesthetic representative of the spiritual glamour of the Aurora, thanks to the orchestral layers which bring a decent portion of melancholy and spirituality to the table, but at the end of the day, the emotion just isn’t there and it all comes across artificial. It doesn’t help that Ben’s performance throughout the entire album remains stubbornly impotent and unwilling to deviate from the tried formula of the original versions, largely due to the band banking on vocal support making the alterations. All of the harmonies and guest spots bring that differentiation to the table, while Ben sings his parts stoically and to the letter of their original compositions. A minor niggle I have with this release also stems from the marketing, which has gone on to state that the band is reimagining some of their biggest songs. Whether this is down to royalty issues with previous members remains to be seen – and it’s somewhat subjective on what you would consider to be their “biggest songs” – but the tracklist is largely underwhelming and mainly consists of tracks from their most recent efforts. This to me is a wasted opportunity, because if there was ever a time to go back and shake up some old hits you would think it was now – with Breaking Benjamin’s newest incarnation firmly settled down and ready to give its own take on these celebratory pieces.
Since 2015, I feel like the only time Breaking Benjamin is being consistent is when they’re being inconsistent. They’ve got some good ideas, and they’ve even had some good tracks since
Dark Before Dawn, but there’s a number of the same problems that continuously plague their albums – production always being one of them. This could have been great. It’s something that should have not only been a self-congratulatory project and celebration for the fans, but a body of work that bridges the old with the new. If this had a better production, would the songs display that quality? Personally, it would have salvaged a lot of the enjoyment missing, but even then, there’s a sore lack of that same passion behind the unrefined 2004 acoustic “So Cold” rendition. I mean, look, it isn’t offensively bad or anything, after all, they’re working with some solid material here. But with a bad production and a lack of enthusiasm from Burnley, these once-promising interpretations already feel redundant and inferior next to their source materials.
FORMAT//EDITIONS: DIGITAL/̶/̶C̶D̶/̶/̶V̶I̶N̶Y̶L̶/̶/̶V̶A̶R̶I̶O̶U̶S̶ ̶B̶U̶N̶D̶L̶E̶S̶
PACKAGING: N/A
SPECIAL EDITION BONUSES: N/A
ALBUM STREAM//PURCHASE: https://store.breakingbenjamin.com/
