Breaking Benjamin - So Cold
By Joannie Foney

Breaking Benjamin - So Cold
Label: Hollywood
Rating: 

Way back in the old days, the local Clear Channel Radio Cartel played songs from up & coming new bands in order to advance the Music Packing Industry (MPI)'s crusade to encourage consumer consumption of some shiny new products offered by MPI. Jet & Breaking Benjamin were the bands on the menu. Jet sounded like the musical mission statement of the MPI, while BB showed enough noncompliance with the MPI charter that I actually thought I liked BB. Whoops, now that I've listened to their mind stultifying So Cold EP, I realize that to compare BB to Jet & say BB is better is akin to comparing the spray of a skunk to the stench of rotting flesh & concluding that skunks aren't so bad. 
 
The "So Cold" buffet doesn't have as much as one original dish on it. I realize that every band is derivative of some other band, but most groups are better at hiding this truth. Benji's live, acoustical version of "So Cold", the very reason most fans will buy this CD, represents a musical returning to the scene of their crime. This is how many bumbling criminals get caught. The reworking of this song by slowing it down and removing the effects reveals the gutted carcass of a System of a Down song. Officer, arrest those men! 
 
Next item up is the no- taste diet platter, "Blow Me Away". Here Benji reveals the vast cliché farm they have exclusive harvesting rights to, which enables them to write very familiar lyrics few haven't heard before. Cliché harvesting is as easy as falling off a log!!
 
"Lady Bug" slowly salutes the Sex Pistols, another band BB owes a great musical debt to. "Away" at least offers originality in the vocal department. Most singers shy away from trying to sing unsteadily off key, maybe BB felt bad about all the borrowed tunes and wanted to give fans at least something unique on this album, nice try, guys, but no thanks! "Breakdown" serves a musical casserole of many other bands, and that concludes this rehashed release.
 
If you like System of a Down, Nickelback, slowed down Sex Pistols, Korn, Velvet Revolver or Linkin Park, go buy their albums instead of this one & send BB an undeniable message that skunks stink no matter what you compare them to!

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