LIVE FROM THE PIT: Breaking Benjamin, Chevelle and Return To Dust

Pulling up to the O2 Academy Brixton, you would be forgiven for shuddering at the extremely long snake protruding out of the entrance. But slithery bastard it is not, those are the attendees. The sheer number of people lining up outside the venue is actually staggering (in fact we measured it, by the time we got to the back of the line we were half a mile from the entrance). There’s a very, very good reason for the volume of attendees tonight; the ever-elusive BREAKING BENJAMIN have made a rare appearance on the other side of the pond, their first in ten years actually. This is all courtesy of the titular frontman, Benjamin Burnley’s fear of flying, something represented by the cover of their 2006 album Phobia (which is also a stock image funnily enough) of a man with angel wings hovering over a runway. This means that he’ll have to leave a week before the rest of the band, a testament to how much they’ve missed touring in Europe. 

RETURN TO DUST are the soundtrack to a lot of people just arriving into the venue, who are also instantly hit by the suffocating humidity that turns the whole place into the worst sauna you’ve ever been in. The band are way ahead of the curve too – they’ve all got their shirts off already. The first song we see them do is a strange cover of OutKast’s Hey Ya! which… really needs to be left alone by rock artists. It just doesn’t really work, they choose not to include the “y’all don’t wanna hear me you just wanna dance” part which perfectly illustrates the point of the song… so why bother doing the cover? A certain currently popular masked band are clearly spreading their influence. Once that’s done, they break into a quite grungy number before leaving the stage in all their naked glory. Shame that a few people missed it due to the sheer length of that queue. 

Tour staples CHEVELLE are the next to go on, contemporaries of Breaking Benjamin, having toured with them a number of times since the early 2000s. The three-piece have seen their fair share of success in recent years, being given more exposure now than ever before thanks to the TikTok algorithm. It is refreshing to see, as they were always something of an underdog champion in the golden days of nu/post metal. And it’s clearly made quite an impression as they emerge onstage to a rapturous fanfare. Their energy is absolutely explosive and their sound is loud enough to rattle all of the fake shrubbery inside the academy. In a perfect world, these guys would have their own headline show as well, as they are clearly more than capable of blowing the house down. They break into classics which get a real great crowd reaction like Send the pain below and The Red (shame they didn’t play Jars, though) and make light of the ungodly humid conditions saying that we “like it hot and heavy just like back in the US” – much like suffocating indeed. Their strength carries the day, and it is increasingly abundant as the set goes on that fourty minutes is nowhere near enough time to fully appreciate this band, and by the time they go you’re already wanting them to come back onstage and play a few more.

After the sound desk lob a few nu-metal classics at the crowd to loudly sing along to, to a massive screech BREAKING BENJAMIN almost glide onto the stage. Last of all is Ben himself who is joined by his son, also called Ben. How many Benjamins are going to be breaking tonight, exactly? Little Ben is quite the young man, standing beside his father mimicking his every action and singing into a mic that is very clearly not actually being mixed into the overall sound (if you’re reading this Little Ben, we’re sorry), but seems to be hopefully training for taking over the tenure of the group when Ben senior decides to hang up the mic. We shall see. The first song is I Will Not Bow, and by god in heaven does the crowd know every single fuckin’ word to this song. 

At this point the movement in the crowd picks up, and the venue starts to veer towards unbearably hot. With the world warming up due to the general disregard for anything living and breathing by the large corporations of the world, it seems now imperative that venues prioritise air conditioning. Throughout the show people can be seen walking out, or even limping out, due to the inexplicable heat.

Whilst everyone seems to take their shirts off in the pit, the stage turns red and they veer into Until The End, and once again everyone knows all the words. In fact, at times its damn hard to hear Ben (senior), as everyone screams their heart out so endearingly. Throughout the show, the band is tight, Ben is also on point, and the band seems to be playing as tightly to the schedule as they possibly can. The tone is all there, and every song is performed so majestically it’s as if they recorded all of their classic albums yesterday. Through Evil Angel, Dear Agony, and Crawl, they play as if they are at their zenith. The only qualm would be with the mixing, which seems to corrugate everything into an aural mud. Seeing A Perfect Circle play at the very same venue only a month ago, their sound was magnificent in comparison. The guitars could be punchier, Ben’s voice could be higher in the mix, and overall the whole thing could be louder. There were even times when taking out ear protection was the preferable choice. 

Everyone wearing a Halo shirt is practically exploding when Blow Me Away starts playing. As if by magic, we are brought back to one of the penultimate levels of Halo 2 where Masterchief is happily blasting away at both Elites and Brutes to this very song, a cultural moment so powerful no shooter has managed to capture its magnificence since. People recklessly throw their shirtless selves around the moshpitswith abandon, lost in the hype moments and aura displayed before them. While it would be nice to have a screen playing the Halo mission (or modified Doom map… for some reason), all we get here in London is a flag. Bit of a shame really. But it definitely gets one of the largest fan pops of the night. 

We then get some emotional numbers, Follow, Angels Fall, and You make the tears well up, or is it sweat? But when they shift into So Cold, the song that took them from big to massive, the ante goes way up. This song had the whole year 2007 in a chokehold, some of you were babies in your nappies then, but trust me, people on the internet were putting this song into everything. The staying power of this song is evident by the reaction once more, not deterred by losing a good 70% of their body’s water supply to sweat, the crowd continues to scream the words right back to Ben, who even begins to crack at the end. Hard to blame him, there is a deep and vicious pain behind this song that only Ben seems to fully appreciate. They quickly follow it up with another one of their bangers, Polyamorous, by this time a good chunk of the crowd was shirtless and waving their clothes around wildly. It’s almost enough to convince you that it was the peak of the 2000s outside of these walls. 

After Dear Agony serves up a similar brand of angsty majesty, Big Ben and Little Ben do some talking. It sounds like Big Ben is planning on coming across the sea every TWO YEARS now! Yay! And Little Ben also gets his chance to banter. He states “you know that whispering in the next song before it gets real heavy, that’s my voice” with great pride, to which the crowd begins to chant his name. Must have been one heck of a moment for the little fella, really wholesome stuff. It segues into one of their newer songs; Something Wicked, to which Little Ben really wasn’t kidding about that breakdown, seriously heavy stuff. It goes down a storm like all the other songs, and it hits you just how consistent this band has been through the years. They drive through “Breath”, other new song Awaken, Failure and Dance with the Devil with a very economical speed, and even through the intense heat the crowd never lets up. After some words from Big Ben who is very complimentary to the city of London as the last stop of their European tour, he very earnestly states that he cannot wait to see us again before “that” riff begins…

That’s right, it’s time for The Diary Of Jane, which is pure and utter nostalgic joy from start to finish, which ends all too quickly at a blistering three minutes. They really should have gone prog and extended the length to seven minutes because nobody in the O2 can get enough of it. And just like that, the show is very obviously over – there is no following that up. They don’t do the “peek-a-boo” type encores either, which is a very welcome change. They came, they saw, they conquered. And as we all breathe in the fresh and cool air soaked in our own sweat, we hope that the wait is not as brutal as before, as this band is still on the tippy top of their game to this very day.

Words: Kiarash Golshani

Photo: Breaking Benjamin