Breaking Benjamin

Dark Before Dawn Tour – 5/20/15
Egyptian Room at Old National Center – Indianapolis, IN

Several years ago, I forced myself to sit down and document my bucket list – a list of bands that I desperately wanted to see before I got too old…or they did.  Breaking Benjamin was one of the first bands that came to mind.  At that time, catching a show was out of the question, as singer Benjamin Burnley was sick, and the band was in a nasty legal battle over the band name and material. My general assumption was that Breaking Benjamin as I knew it was probably over.  However, I still put them on my bucket list and held on to hope.

Much to my thrill, in 2014 it was announced that BB was on it’s way back, with a brand new band surrounding Burnley, a new album, and some heavy touring planned.  I was ecstatic.  After 12 years of anticipation, I was finally able to check them off my bucket list at Rock on the Range 2015, but rather than blog about that show, I decided to hold off until 3 days later, when we had the opportunity to catch them up close in personal, for a headlining set in a small venue in Indianapolis called the Egyptian Room.  Breaking Benjamin – let’s do this.

Most shows that I see at The Egyptian Room see the place about a third full, but for this show, the place was wall to wall.  Young Guns opened up the show, and did a great job of warming up the packed house.  In fact, this was the second time I’ve seen Young Guns, and both shows have been really solid.  Their song Bones has been stuck in my head for weeks. Definitely excited to see where that band ends up, but I didn’t have long to think about it, because I couldn’t get my excitement off of Breaking Benjamin.  As the set change occurred, I was thinking about all of the interesting elements of this show that I wanted to make sure I paid attention to.  Could Burnley sing through his illness (which he still suffers from)?  Could the new band mates keep up with the songs they didn’t write?  Would the harmonies on backup vocals be strong enough to carry?  So many interesting things to look for.  I was bursting.

When it was go-time, and Burnley walked out to start the show, the place felt electric.  It was almost as if this crowd loved Breaking Benjamin, but they had gone away for a long time for a silly reason……  The stage was pretty simple – I didn’t exactly expect elaborate, as BB doesn’t strike me as flashy, and that proved to be the case here.  They started the show with So Cold, and I immediately started honing in on the vocals.  While that may seem strange, my favorite element of BB is how demanding their harmonies are, and this show would take a huge hit for me if the new group couldn’t pull those harmonies off.

Burnley sounded great right out of the gate – throughout the night, he was consistently solid and felt at home on stage.  I won’t paint the picture that he’s the best of the best at live vocals, but he is certainly top tier, and his vocals were strong enough that I could simply enjoy the songs.  I was also pretty impressed with the back up vocals.  You could really tell that guitarist Keith Wallen and bassist Aaron Bruch were pushing themselves hard on the vocally demanding material, but the result was a pretty consistent effort that was surprisingly well-executed.  It wasn’t perfect, but that’s to be expected with a new group, and it was good enough to make me really excited about the future for this band.  The song Give Me a Sign sticks out in my head as a spot where I was really blown away by spot-on harmonies that melted together and sounded fantastic.

One other comment on vocals before I move on – you don’t think of BB as a band that screams that often, but I found myself surprised by how often Burnley did go to unclean vocals.  I was absolutely FLOORED by how great his unclean vocals were.  Songs like Blow Me Away, and Until the End let Burnley really unleash, and I really couldn’t believe how great it sounded.  I know some metalcore bands that have vocalists that do nothing BUT scream that couldn’t touch Burnley’s uncleans.  Very unexpectedly impressive.

Moving on from vocals, I think that Burnley really surrounded himself with a quality group of musicians.  Most impressive of the new members was drummer Shaun Foist, who was especially talented at both playing and performing, but really,  the whole group was solid.  You could tell that these guys were no strangers to the stage, and I thought the band really sounded great.  I was never able to see the original lineup in a live setting, so my comparison is obviously flawed, but after seeing this show, I really feel like this group is capable of driving BB for years and years.

In terms of set list – Breaking Benjamin played somewhere in the range of an hour and a half, performing nearly 20 songs, all of which seemed like hits.  This dude is a hit-song-writing machine.  There wasn’t a single weakness in the song list – high energy, high quality songs, one after the other.  Even songs that I don’t consider my favorite, like Shallow Bay, Dance with the Devil, and Unknown Soldier, were just really strong live – I found myself relating it to a Korn show in the sense that there’s just no let-up, no gaps, no “meh, I’ll go grab a beer now” moment.

In addition to string of expected great hits, one highlight was the new song Failure, which didn’t blow me away on the album, but killed live.  In addition, there was a cover-mash up that included the Imperial March from Star Wars (Burnley is a video game geek), Tool’s Schism, Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit, and Pantera’s Walk.  I usually have mixed opinions on covers, but for some reason this one worked really well for me – the right variety/randomness, the right duration, and the right time in the show, all of which made it a perfect refreshing break from the typical Breaking Benjamin song structure.

Closing tracks included Evil Angel, Until the End, and I Will Not Bow, which I loved, and that concluded an hour and 20 minutes of the show.  The band left the stage, and the crowd predictably went nuts for an encore.  They came back out, DESTROYED the song Dance with the Devil (which turned into a highlight), and then played Lights Out, before prepping for their last song.  As the intro for Diary of Jane played, I was just grinning ear to ear.  I knew it was almost over, and that bummed me out, but I just couldn’t help but be so pumped to finally have seen this band.

However, as good as Diary of Jane was, that wasn’t the best moment of the show.  Those who read my blog frequently know that I’m always looking for the moment of the show that makes me lose my mind.  Sometimes its a predictable breakdown in a favorite song, sometimes it’s a guitar solo that catches me off guard, but there’s always a moment that moves the show to an experience, and changes my role from spectator to participant.  It’s the moment where the music takes over logical thought and I forget everything else – who I’m with, where I am, and what I was dealing with before the show started.  Never has that moment been more evident than it was at this show.  At about the halfway point (forty five minutes in), Burnley gave a shout out to the old school BB fans, and said that the next song was off of the Saturate album.  I had been waiting for Polyamorous all day (it’s an all time favorite), but the next song was Shallow Bay instead, which was great, so I sort of forgot about it and moved on.  Two songs later, the intro to Polyamorous hit out of nowhere, and my moment kicked me right in the teeth – chills, slight panic, and utter bliss simultaneously took over.  That moment drug me through a decade of music, and a decade of my life, all at once.  The room disappeared, and as I sang at the top of my lungs, and prayed that the moment wouldn’t end, I was reminded about why I love music so much.

I love that moment.   That moment is transcendent for me.  It calms me, centers me – It’s the ultimate high, better than any drug out there.  And that, friends, is where the name The Music Pill came from.  🙂

Thanks Breaking Benjamin – for letting me cross off something on my bucket list, for giving me the chance to see one of my favorite bands, and for reminding me why this is my passion.

Cheers!

“So, just when you think that you’re all right, I’m calling out from the inside.  I never hurt anyone.  I never listen at all.”