Current Members:
Benjamin Burnley – lead vocals, rhythm guitar
Aaron Fink – lead guitar, backing vocals
Mark Klepaski – bass guitar
Chad Szeliga – drums, percussion
One of the most popular modern rock bands of today and my all time personal favorite is Breaking Benjamin. They are an American Rock band from Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania and have an alternative-metal sound and Post-Grunge style. The band was formed by lead singer Ben Burnley and Jeremy Hummel, a drummer the no longer with them, in 1998. The band got its original name at an open mic night when lead singer Ben Burnley was covering one of Nirvana’s songs and kicked over the microphone while performing which broke it. The man who owned the microphone came to the stage and said, “I’d like to thank Benjamin for breaking my microphone.” In the late 90′s the band changed their name to Plan 9, but then changed it back to Breaking Benjamin in 2001. Unlike many mainstream bands, Breaking Benjamin does not just contain one sound. The band has some songs with harder guitars, but some also reside to a more quiet and peaceful, melodic sound. Ben sings on all different vocal pitches and in some of the harder songs, screams at certain points, but only a couple songs off of each album have this and it is not at such a profuse amount that the listener is disgusted . On each of their albums, they include a Celtic Knot with four interlocking B’s somewhere in the artwork, which is a symbol that they have become well-known by. Each of the band members also have the symbol tatooed on one of their wrists.
On August 27th, 2002, Breaking Benjamin’s first studio album, Saturate, was released. Their immediate and first hit single off of the album was “Polyamorous”. “Skin” and “Medicate were two more hit singles that became popular the following year. There are two different versions for the music video “Polyamorous”. One features scenes from the video game Run like Hell, and the other features scenes that contain couples engaged in flirtatious actions.
Breaking Benjamin’s second studio album, We Are Not Alone, was released on June 24th, 2004. Their immediate hit single from the album was “So Cold”. In 2005, the songs “Sooner or Later” and “Rain” became hit singles as well. “Sooner or Later” and “So Cold” also feature music videos.
Later, after the release of We Are Not Alone, Breaking Benjamin released an EP they called the So Cold EP. This contained live versions of “So Cold (Acoustic), “Breakdown” and “Away”. This also featured the studio version of a song the band did for the video game Halo 2 called “Blow Me Away”.
The third studio album that they released was Phobia. Phobia was releasted on August 8th, 2006 and features The Diary of Jane as the album’s hit single and in the following year, “Breath” and “Until the End” became hit singles also. “Breath” and the “The Diary of Jane” feature music videos, and Breath was the band’s first number one billboard single and Phobia reached platinum status, selling over one-million copies in the United States.
The band’s fourth and most recent album is Dear Agony. It was released on September 29th, 2009 and its current hit single is “I Will Not Bow”. “I Will Not Bow” appeared in the movie Surogates starring Bruce Willis and their music video for the single is based off of the movie as well. “I Will Not Bow” was supposed to be release on all radio stations on August 17th, but the bands hometown, Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, was having a special hearing of the song on one of their local radio stations. The single was spread all over the internet by 8pm that night despite its August 17th release to all other radio stations.
The band does a few covers that do not appear on the American versions of the albums and they are “Ladybug” and “Enjoy the Silence”. Another song that is supposedly on the Japanese version of We Are Not Alone, but not the American version sadly, is a song called “Ordinary Man”. An EP was made as a tribute to the band Queen which is called Killer Queen: A Tribute to Queen and Breaking Benjamin covers one of their songs called “Who Wants to Live Forever”.
Breaking Benjamin is currently signed to Hollywood Records for a five-record deal and they have only released four this far so be ready! Any other information you feel you should share with me about the band do so. Comments are greatly appreciated as well. I am going to try to get the bands newest hit single “I Will Not Bow” to play on this post, but I am new to blogging so it may take some time. If you are interested, tour dates and other information can be found here.
