Progress stops with 'Phobia'

With past albums “Saturate” and “Phobia”, Breaking Benjamin kept improving their style with stronger guitar riffs and improved vocals. However, that all seemingly stopped, as “Dear Agony” is severely disappointed. 

Though there are some hard-hitting tracks this time around like “Crawl,” it has the same brooding message as all the other songs on the album. “Dear Agony” is full of hard-hitting lyrics that you can’t help but to sympathize with, but as the album keeps going the songs sound exactly the same.

Hell, I thought “Without You” and “What Lies Beneath” were the same long-ass song. All the efforts have the same catchy guitar riffs, strong angst-ridden lyrics and catchy choruses.

A number of these songs are fine and good radio-rockers, but “Agony” features a little too much of the same.