{"id":10921,"date":"2018-04-02T11:00:30","date_gmt":"2018-04-02T15:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.altwire.net\/?p=10921"},"modified":"2023-12-06T06:39:51","modified_gmt":"2023-12-06T11:39:51","slug":"breaking-benjamin-ember","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/altwire.net\/es\/breaking-benjamin-ember\/","title":{"rendered":"Breaking Benjamin \u2013 Ember (2018): Sigue ardiendo intensamente"},"content":{"rendered":"

Any mid-2000s, hard rock fan probably can\u2019t help but remember Rompiendo a Benjamin<\/strong><\/a>. A decade ago, Breaking Benjamin’s third studio effort, Fobia<\/em>, stood as a near-perfect representation of exactly what radio friendly post-grunge could aspire to be.<\/h4>\n

With massive drop tuned guitar riffs, blasting percussion work, and Benjamin Burnley<\/strong>\u2019s signature guttural growls and cathartic lyricism, it was the album that embraced everything right about the genre, while still maintaining a certain originality within itself.<\/p>\n

Sure, it wasn\u2019t necessarily the most critically acclaimed album of the era, nor the most boundary breaking or innovative (on the contrary, it fits in rather nicely next to your Three Days Grace<\/a><\/strong>'arena Brillar abajo<\/a><\/strong>\u2019s of the decade), but Fobia<\/em> cemented itself as el <\/em>definitive Rompiendo a Benjamin<\/a><\/strong> album. There was something about it that made you look twice throughout the record, from the tense atmosphere built throughout the introductory \u2018Intro\u2019 that leads perfectly into the roaring lead single \u2018The Diary of Jane\u2019, through to the final, more experimental direction of \u2018You Fight Me\u2019 and \u2018Outro\u2019.<\/p>\n

Thematically, as is often the case with the group\u2019s content, the album drew influence from the very phobias frontman Benjamin Burnley<\/strong> suffers from, such as the symbolic reference to aerophobia (the fear of flying) depicted on the album cover art, and ultimately it all enriched Fobia<\/em>\u2019s material spectacularly.<\/p>\n

The group\u2019s newest release, Ember<\/em>, represents a virtually entirely new Rompiendo a Benjamin<\/strong>; with Burnley<\/strong> remaining the only original member of the band, since overcoming an extensive legal battle that ultimately threatened the band\u2019s continuing existence. The reformed quintet\u2019s 2014 \u201cdebut\u201d, Oscuridad antes del amanecer<\/em><\/a>, saw the band again staying very true to the group\u2019s established stylistic direction of old.<\/p>\n

While competently written, this decision ultimately drew differing critical opinions as to whether or not the band\u2019s original style had been exhausted by this point, seeing the album as an attempt to recapture what made the likes of Fobia<\/em> so compelling, while others praised the decision to continue it, with an almost \u201cif it isn\u2019t broken, don\u2019t fix it\u201d attitude.<\/p>\n

Con Ember<\/em>, 2018\u2019s incarnation of the band again<\/em> continues the classic Rompiendo a Benjamin<\/strong> trend, this much can\u2019t be denied, but where Ember <\/em>comes to represent a newer version of the group hasn\u2019t stemmed from reinvention; instead, this comes from reinvigoration, and while Oscuridad antes del amanecer<\/em> perhaps borrowed just a little bit too much Fobia<\/em>, Ember<\/em> looks to be better than this.<\/p>\n

Sure, the huge choruses and guitar riffage remains as it always has, with pre-release singles \u2018Red Cold River\u2019 and \u2018Feed The Wolf\u2019 both seamlessly fitting in with the rest of the band\u2019s extensive, catchy post-grunge discography, but this time around the band feels well and truly back on track. Take the hard-hitting, yet euphoric \u2018Torn In Two\u2019, or the soaring, reenergised performance on \u2018Save Yourself\u2019, for example; the latter\u2019s crunchy rolling guitar riff and vaguely sinister underlying synthesiser is hardly new territory for the group, but Burnley<\/strong>\u2019s coarse, searing deliverance of the track\u2019s chorus feels like the Benjamin Burnley <\/strong>of a decade ago, \u201cso save yourself, I leave this world tonight – there\u2019s nothing now, I see the sun rise.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Now, sitting here defending the band\u2019s decision to maintain the same musical direction for virtually an entire career is going to feel like wasted breath to some; Ember<\/em> marks the sixth<\/u> album in Rompiendo a Benjamin<\/strong>\u2019s catalogue, and while things are taken into slightly heavier territory than usual, \u2018Psycho\u2019s immense, thunderous percussion and bass guitar work an easy instrumental highlight for the record, Ember<\/em> is still likely to give sceptics plenty of ammunition to work with.<\/p>\n

Yes, it is similar, and yes, we\u2019ve probably heard something like it before, but it\u2019s for this exact reason that this can no longer be considered the safe <\/em>option for the band. It\u2019s taken plenty of other far more stylistically innovative groups far less<\/em> time to make the decision to drastically alter their sound, usually to keep things fresh and not become stagnant in their own creativity, but preferring to keep within the established boundaries of what makes Rompiendo a Benjamin<\/strong>\u2026 well, Rompiendo a Benjamin<\/em><\/strong>, is probably the bravest decision the band could have made.<\/p>\n

Simply put, Ember <\/em>is a risk, one that the group embraces wholeheartedly; \u2018Blood\u2019 slams through the mix in a furious blast of guitar distortion, and Burnley<\/strong>\u2019s roaring vocals deliver one of the album\u2019s best choruses, and while it\u2019s everything you already know from the band, the attitude is quite clearly \u201cto hell with it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now, this all having been said, there is one moment in particular that completely deviates from the general norm of what can be considered \u201ctypical\u201d Rompiendo a Benjamin<\/strong>; this of course, is in reference to \u2018The Dark of You.\u2019 Located right at the centre of the track list, right at the coraz\u00f3n<\/em> of the album, \u2018The Dark of You\u2019 (featuring additional vocals from Derek Hough<\/strong>) is Benjamin Burnley<\/strong>\u2019s writing at its absolute finest.<\/p>\n

The ethereal, lonely atmospherics, gentle piano work, and softly building more aggressive side of things all come together for a brief, beautifully haunting moment, serving as the perfect reprieve between \u2018Psycho\u2019 and \u2018Down\u2019, a calm before the continuing storm.<\/p>\n

For better or worse, Ember<\/em> is exactly what you\u2019d expect from Rompiendo a Benjamin<\/strong>. While presenting the band reinvigorated for another round in the ring, and hitting back twice as hard as last time, Ember<\/em> does exactly what it needs to get the band\u2019s groove going again. It\u2019s hard to deny just how much fun the album can be, when taking into account the enraged energy that fuels the likes of \u2018Psycho\u2019 and \u2018Blood\u2019, but of course keeping in line with what came before will no doubt draw the same criticisms as last time, (and the time before that no doubt).<\/p>\n

Dicho esto, Benjamin Burnley and Co. <\/strong>seem pretty disinterested in what the sceptics have to say. Instead, the band have released exactly the kind of album they were fully capable of making a decade ago, and all in all, it\u2019s pretty damn great because of it.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Any mid-2000s, hard rock fan probably can\u2019t help but remember Breaking Benjamin. A decade ago, Breaking Benjamin’s third studio effort, … Leer m\u00e1s<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":75,"featured_media":10923,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","transcript_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[143],"class_list":["post-10921","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews","tag-breaking-benjamin","generate-columns","tablet-grid-50","mobile-grid-100","grid-parent","grid-50"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/altwire.net\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10921","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/altwire.net\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/altwire.net\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/altwire.net\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/75"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/altwire.net\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10921"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/altwire.net\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10921\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/altwire.net\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10923"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/altwire.net\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10921"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/altwire.net\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10921"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/altwire.net\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10921"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}