We Are Not Alone

“It’s okay to be discouraged. It’s not okay to quit. To know you want to quit but to plant your feet and keep inching closer until you take the impenetrable fortress you’ve decided to lay siege to in your own life—that’s persistence.” –Ryan Holiday

Breaking Benjamin released their second album, We Are Not Alone, on 29 June 2004. Produced by Ulrich Wild, it debuted at number twenty on the Billboard chart, with 48,000 copies sold in its first week of release. It was certified Platinum in the U.S. in June of 2005.

The album’s lead single was its opening track, “So Cold.” Peaking at number two, the track spent sixty-two weeks on the Billboard Mainstream Rock chart, holding the record for most weeks spent there. It’s one of those tracks that starts off quietly, then builds and builds with each verse, like Korn’s “Freak on a Leash,” or Soundgarden’s “Black Hole Sun.” This is a great sound for an opening track, something that can satisfy fans of the band’s debut, while introducing the follow-up with something fairly straightforward but hard hitting.

“I was in New York when I wrote that song, around 2003,” Benjamin Burnley said in an interview with Apple Music. “It was wintertime, so it was really cold and I was totally cut off from the world in this really cool hotel in Manhattan that’s not there anymore. It was a bit of a lonely time; I was by myself, and just doing my best to write this record. I didn’t really think it was all that great at first, but I was in a bad place in my mind back then, … Then it took off and it was a huge, huge success for us. So I’m glad I was in that dark space, because I owe my whole career to it.”

The video, directed by Frank Borin, depicts the band performing in a forest, while a man is convicted and sentenced to carry a slab of stone into a river. He is being punished for infidelity, while his wife and side piece can be seen in black and white robes, respectfully. “I always picture it as an end-of-the-world kind of thing,” Burnley said of the song’s imagery and storytelling. “It’s not about that, but I picture that because there’s a line that goes, ‘If you find your family/ Don’t you cry,’ and it makes me think it’s because they’re dead when you find them — like in the movie 28 Days Later. I love that movie.”

That dark space Burnley speaks of shows in the lyrics, not just of the single, but the album as a whole. Whether it is the end of the world, or something else, themes of depression, alienation, fear, and dishonesty are explored thoroughly. “What stands in the way becomes the way,” Marcus Aurelius once said. Whatever space Burnley and his bandmates were in, the result was an incredible album that has stayed with them and the fanbase ever since.

“So Cold” was reimagined for the 2020 acoustic compilation, Aurora, along with other tracks spanning the band’s career.

Two further single were released from We Are Not Alone. “Sooner or Later” and “Rain.” The former is a solid alternative rock track. The latter was originally an acoustic piece, later remodelled into a full band version for the single, as well as later pressings of the album. It was also co-written by Burnley and the Smashing Pumpkins’ frontman Billy Corgan, who also worked on “Follow” and “Forget It.” While the rest of the album’s tracks are awesome in their own right, the collaborations with Corgan are a real high point. “Forget It” in particular is a tour de force of emotion, with a melancholy guitar riff running behind Burnley’s soft vocals, hitting harder than the more aggressive works of the band or their peers. “Rain” makes for an ideal album closer, again showcasing the band’s talent for more mellow, acoustic numbers.

“At first, I was so nervous,” Burnley said in an interview with MTV News, on working with one of his heroes. “When I met him I was like, ‘Oh shit, that’s Billy Corgan.’ But after a while I got more comfortable, and then he just became Billy. I’d come in every day, we’d order soup, eat and then we’d get to work. It was great.” The sessions with Corgan spanned six days, in December of 2003.

As Seneca once said, “Choose as a guide one whom you will admire more when you see him act than when you hear him speak.” Burnley’s decision to choose Corgan as a collaborator and mentor (of sorts) was definitely a step in the right direction, if only for the album.

Creating a working relationship with someone more experienced is crucial in any line of work. I don’t know if Corgan considered himself a mentor per se, or just a collaborator, or something else altogether, but I interpret this working relationship as an example of what happens when a younger creator meets with one who has been through the process of producing a body of work, and has done so many times. So, I will consider the relationship between these two artists that of a mentor and mentee. Each can each bring their own strengths to the table. Mentees, though inexperienced, tend to be energetic, enthusiastic, flexible, and come in with fewer assumptions. Those more experienced are… well, more experienced, and tend to know a good thing when they see it. In just a few days, Corgan and Breaking Benjamin created some incredible tracks for the album that has lasted for decades.

The importance of finding a mentor cannot be understated. “What many of you don’t understand is just how willing most of these people are to lend a hand,” Ryan Holiday once wrote. “They know what it’s like to be where you are. That you’ve even taken the step of contacting them puts you levels above most of the population. That you could cough out a coherent email without patronising them or treating them like they weren’t human is often enough to get you in the door.” Holiday experienced such a process more than once, having apprenticed under Tucker Max and Robert Greene early on in his career.

“The question is ‘How can I encourage people I aspire to be like, who are ten, twenty, thirty years ahead of me to respect me and want me to succeed?’,” author Tim Ferriss says of the process. “That’s a better question. ‘How do I get people say, five, ten, twenty years ahead of me whose paths I might want to emulate? How do I get those people to respect me and want me to succeed?’ If you do that, that’s a precursor to them helping you in ways that resemble those of a mentor. But the word ‘mentor’ is probably a word that will never come up, even though in practice, that’s what they will be doing for you.”

In other words, the process of finding a mentor is not something that simply falls into your lap. Nor is it like reading a book or just absorbing advice passively. The relationship is built over time, with both mentor and mentee growing. When it works, creativity flows from both parties, good things happen, and great works are created.

The band sought out Corgan after hearing of his collaborations with Taproot and Blindside. I can imagine Burnley talking about the album he was already working on, and Corgan, seeing how serious they were, thought it was this cool thing he’d like to get in on. Perhaps. Or maybe management made it all happen, who knows.

Whether it was the Corgan sessions, the buzz surrounding “So Cold,” or just a band creating an awesome body of work, We Are Not Alone got enough attention to propel the band into the mainstream. It was my introduction to Breaking Benjamin too. Somewhere around late 2004, well and truly at the end of my high school years, I felt like I’d had more than my share of the likes of Limp Bizkit and Linkin Park. I still loved those bands, but I kind of wanted to go somewhere else, something that was more straight-ahead rock. When I heard “So Cold,” I’d found the band I was looking for.

To promote the album, Breaking Benjamin toured with Evanescence, Seether, and Three Days Grace, across the States. “So Cold” turned out to be an instant classic with fans, on disc and from the stage. And Burnley and co. loved performing it for the crowd. “It’s a really strong song, and I think that comes from everybody in the band writing it together,” he enthused.

Breaking Benjamin saw out 2004 by joining Korn on their Greatest Hits Tour, along with Chevelle and Skindred. And, though it wasn’t on the album, the single “Blow Me Away” was released on the Halo 2 Original Soundtrack and can be heard in the game. It also appeared on the So Cold EP, so it basically counts as being from the We Are Not Alone era. Do NOT listen to the version on the band’s greatest hits album, it is breathtakingly awful and is generally not considered part of their catalogue.

We Are Not Alone stands strong, twenty years after its debut. While Saturate was a middle-of-the-road hard rock album, without much in the way of any real anthems, We Are Not Alone is definitely more rounded, revealing a level of musicianship far surpassing that of their debut. “So Cold” and “Sooner or Later” have aged nicely and remain fan favourites to this day.

So, no sophomore jinx for Breaking Benjamin. As a longtime fan, it’s good to revisit the album. And for younger listeners not familiar with the band, it’s well worth it as an introduction.