Breaking Benjamin has new look, new band

Benjamin Burnley is hardly the first band leader who has found himself having to replace the other members of his band. But his task was that much trickier because with his band, Breaking Benjamin, Burnley was leaving behind a lineup that had notched three platinum and one gold album during the first decade of the band’s existence.

Burnley, though, already had a list of musicians he wanted to work with by the time he decided to reform Breaking Benjamin in 2014. And after nearly four years with the current lineup, he feels this is the best version he’s had of his band.

“Starting over is not an easy thing in any sort of walk of life,” Burnley said in an early July phone interview. “But I did, for a very long time, I did know who I had in mind, people that I always wanted to play with. So I was really thankful when it actually came to be and we got together. Just because you have individual friends that you get along with individually, that doesn’t mean when you get them all together it’s going to work. So that wound up working really well, too. It was just meant to be.”

The early lineup came together in 2001 when bassist Mark Klepaski and guitarist Aaron Fink joined drummer Jeremy Hummel and Burnley. That lineup enjoyed quick success when the band’s 2002 debut album, “Saturate,” went gold behind the popularity of the single “Polyamorous.”

The second album, “We’re Not Alone,” did even better, with the singles “So Cold” and “Sooner or Later” propelling sales of the album past one million copies. After Hummel was dismissed and replaced by Chad Szeliga, the group went on to release two more platinum albums — “Phobia” (2006) and “Dear Agony” (2009) — while adding such top 5 singles as “The Diary of Jane,” “Breath” and “I Will Not Bow” to the band’s list of hits.

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But then things took a turn into uncertain territory in 2010 when Burnley fired Fink and Klepaski for agreeing — without his knowledge — to record a new version of the hit song “Blow Me Away” for a greatest hits album. Legal actions ensued, and an agreement was reached that enabled Burnley to retain the Breaking Benjamin name and form a new lineup.

Burnley announced the new lineup — guitarist Jasen Rauch (formerly of Red), guitarist/vocalist Keith Wallen (formerly of Adelitas Way), bassist/vocalist Aaron Bruch and drummer Shaun Foist — in 2014, in time to record parts for the Breaking Benjamin album, “Dark Before Dawn,” which Burnley said he had 95 percent written and demoed before he brought the band into the studio.

As such, the newly released Breaking Benjamin album, “Ember,” is really the first album to be made by the new lineup of the group. And the new lineup worked very differently with Burnley.

On the previous five albums, Burnley wrote nearly all of the songs himself, getting only occasional contributions from his former bandmates. For “Ember,” the new members were very much involved in the songwriting process, Burnley said.

“The guys in the band now, not to put anybody down, but the writing we had done with the old lineup, it was very limited and it was very unorganic to me,” Burnley said. “I would have to take pieces and parts from things and make them fit into things that I already had. So with this band, on the writing aspect as well, the writing that those guys do is a lot more along the lines of the writing that I would do. We all kind of clicked that way.”

Even with the contributions of the new band members, “Ember” sounds very much like a Breaking Benjamin album.

That means plenty rockers featuring fierce guitar riffs and sweetened by melodic vocals (“Feed The Wolf,” “Red Cold River” and “Psycho”). With only one moody ballad (“Dark Of You”) providing a brief change of pace, “Ember” is a bit heavier overall than the other Breaking Benjamin albums.

The biggest differences between the current and former Breaking Benjamins may be most apparent on the concert stage. And an extensive co-headlining tour with Five Finger Death Punch means there will be plenty of opportunities to see how Breaking Benjamin’s live show has changed with the new five-man lineup.

“There are a lot of bands, they’ll run (pre-recorded) tracks behind what they’re playing. With the old (four-man) lineup, because we were sort of limited, I had to do that as well,” Burnley explained. “No other guys in the band sang and there wasn’t an extra guitarist. So there were some guitar parts that needed to be in there. There were some computer sounds, like samples and what not, that needed to be in there. We ran everything through a grid to like a click track. With this band, we don’t run any click track and we don’t run any (backing) tracks whatsoever. We use the technology in the right way as far as drum triggers are concerned, so we don’t play to any tracks. So everything we’re doing now is completely 100 percent live.”

Breaking Benjamin and Five Finger Death Punch will play at 6 p.m. Thursday in the Heritage Park Amphitheater, 861 S.E. Main St., Simpsonville.

Want to go?

Who: Breaking Benjamin and Five Finger Death Punch

When: 6 p.m. Thursday

Where: Heritage Park Amphitheater, 861 S.E. Main St., Simpsonville

Tickets: $27 and up

For tickets, call 1-800-745-3000 or go to heritageparkamphitheatre.com