Posted under mtv
Today was a day that was no doubt circled on the calendars of a lot of music fans, as a bunch of high-profile new albums hit the streets, including big-time records from Mariah Carey, Paramore, AFI, Alice in Chains, Barbara Streisand, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Selena Gomez, Ghostface Killah and Miranda Lambert. But a glance at the top downloaded albums on at the iTunes store reveals an unlikely conqueror at the top of the pile. The top downloaded album of today’s new releases isn’t Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel or Brand New Eyes but Dear Agony the fourth full-length from Pennsylvania aggro-rockers Breaking Benjamin.
The band has made a career out of underdog moves like this. They’ve built a following the old-fashioned way: Crafting high-quality, hard-edged records, stringing together a few hits (like “So Cold” and “Breath”), promoting locally and barely ever leaving the touring van. Even the story about their record deal is delightfully old-school, as rather than build Facebook friends or turn themselves into a Twitter meme, they simply pressed 2,000 copies of their own EP and didn’t tire until they sold the entire lot themselves. The group’s plan to promote the release of Dear Agony melds old-school and new media quite well, as not only do they have three of the tunes from the album available for download on “Rock Band” today, but they’ll also play a secret show in their hometown of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, tonight. It’s not easy to climb over the likes of Paramore, Mariah Carey and Miranda Lambert, but Breaking Benjamin have proven that it’s possible. In their honor, here’s the video for the subversively catchy “The Diary of Jane,” from 2006’s Phobia.