Breaking Benjamin with special guest Starset

Six years have passed since BREAKING BENJAMIN released their last album—2009’s Dear Agony—but one listen to their new album, Dark Before Dawn, and it becomes clear that time away from the music world hasn’t caused them to lose a step. Upon release, Dark Before Dawn debuted #1 on Billboard’s Top 200 album chart, a first for the multi-platinum band, while their first single “Failure” spent 8 consecutive weeks at #1 at rock radio. The band’s sound is noticeably more invigorated, energetic, and purposeful than ever and marks a new era as founder/frontman, Ben Burnley, worked with guitarists Jasen Rauch (RED) and Keith Wallen (Adelitas Way), bassist Aaron Bruch and drummer Shaun Foist (Picture Me Broken.) The result is simultaneously vintage BREAKING BENJAMIN and yet decisively more cohesive.

Over the past decade BREAKING BENJAMIN has achieved worldwide success through their chart-topping music, their electrifying live performances and in the process amassed a sizeable and diehard fan base (over 5.7 million likes on Facebook, 220,000+ followers on Twitter.) And, it’s the fans that ultimately fuels Burnley. “The band has always really been about the fans to me,” says Burnley. “That’s who comes first to me, and that’s what it’s all about. There’s nothing that matters any more than that to me, and so I’m just happy I’m able to give them the best they can possibly get.”

BREAKING BENJAMIN’S discography includes 2002’s Saturate, 2004’s We Are Not Alone, 2006’s Phobia, and 2009’s Dear Agony. The second two—We Are Not Alone and Phobia—yielded spectacular results with each being certified Platinum. We Are Not Alone spawned a pair of No. 1 radio hits (“So Cold” and “Sooner Or Later”) and sold 2.3 million units (albums and digital tracks). Phobia debuted at No. 2 on Billboard’s Top 200, hit No. 1 on the Rock Album Chart and was one of the top 50 selling rock albums of 2006. It featured one No. 1 and two Top 5 rock radio hits (“Breath,” “Diary of Jane” and “Until The End”) and sold 2.8 million units (albums and digital tracks). 2009’s Dear Agony debuted #4 on the Billboard Top 200 chart on one of the busiest release days of the year and #1 on the iTunes Rock Album Chart. Dear Agony also spun off the platinum selling and #1 song Active Rock single “I Will Not Bow” where it stayed #1 for five weeks straight while the album itself was certified Gold, selling over 500K copies.

Dark Before Dawn has already spawned a Top 10 rock radio hit with “Failure” and the full album will be released June 23^rd. Don’t miss BREAKING BENJAMIN when their tour makes a stop at the Sands Event Center on August 5th!

Starset is the sonic interzone where fact, science and speculation collide. Their Razor & Tie debut, Transmissions is a thought-provoking broadcast of cinematic rock full of dramatic intents and personal nuances. Like any great piece of art, Transmissions begs more questions than it actually answers: precisely the intent of vocalist and songwriter Dustin Bates. What separates Starset from being simply a great band? When Bates formed Starset in 2013, it was done in collusion with a shadowy, multi-media group called The Starset Society to expand on scientific and political themes that course throughout the albums’ lyrical zeitgeist.

Figurative. Literal. Real. Imagined. A delusion. A warning. Imagine an audio-visual schema culled from the fever-dreams of Trent Reznor and Phillip K. Dick. The Starset Society is an admonishment of what mankind could become when technologies are created without implication. Songs like the active-rock hit, “My Demons” or sprawling “Halo” are the audio accompaniment to a tale set amongst humanity’s highest aspirations and utter ruin. Bates’ voice is at once plaintive and bellicose: a rage against the machine of slashing guitars and pulsing electronics where songs like “Carnivore” are slaked with heaviness and harmony while the likes of “Telescope” show a haunting, poignant side to Dustin’s dangerous visions.

Bates’ credentials are wildly compelling. A PhD candidate in electrical engineering at Ohio University, he has done research for the U.S. Air Force and taught at the International Space University. He was also briefly signed to Epic Records with his prior group, Downplay: an experience that fueled the frontman’s rage against the corporate machine when his album was shelved due to record company indifference.

With producer Rob Graves (Red, All That Remains), Bates forged a next-gen creative alloy that would become Transmissions. The album was subsequently mixed by Ben Grosse (30 Seconds to Mars, Fuel) and soon after, found a home with Razor & Tie Records.

The themes and ideological fractals at the core of Starset are completely fact-based. They date back to 1899 when Nikola Tesla detected cosmic radio signals he believed to be communications from alien intelligences. They are also as cutting edge as the recent discovery of Planet Kepler 186, a “Twin Earth” light years away that could one day become a home for a spacefaring human race. With Bates & Crew currently on the road winning over fans: it’s very clear the Starset message has been sent.