Breaking Point

After reading the title of this review, you may be wondering just who in fact Breaking Point is and you also might be questioning how any type of disorder could be beautiful. While I’m not sure of the answer to this second question, I do know that Breaking Point is a four piece rock outfit from Memphis, Tennessee created by singer/guitarist Brett Erickson and guitarist Justin Rimer. The band just recently released its sophomore album Beautiful Disorder, the follow up to their late 2001 debut disc Coming of Age and they are starting to garner more and more popularity within North America. After thoroughly listening to Beautiful Disorder and its eleven tracks, I can safely say the disorder is no where near beautiful and in actuality, it’s probably closer to ugly.

The record gets underway with the first single “Show Me A Sign,” a good introduction to Breaking Point’s sound. Despite the fact that the song sounds like anything else on modern rock radio stations, it’s still a decent song with a cool, rocking type of chorus. The song is your typical three minute radio tune, but for what it is, it’s a good song. Track two “Don’t Let Go” sounds a lot like the first song and also happens to be the longest song on the disc, clocking in at an astonishingly long four minutes. This is another decent track with another catchy chorus. “All Messed Up” is the first ballad to appear on the disc and after hearing it, you’d probably agree that Breaking Point shouldn’t do ballads. The song’s arrangement is quite unoriginal and it has some of the most clichéd lyrics I’ve heard in a long time. Next comes “Promise Keeper,” a song that sounds like it was lifted from Three Doors Down’s stash of b-sides. “Goodbye To You” is another ballad with more extremely unoriginal lyrics that sound like they were taken from a Backstreet Boys song, but the song does fare better than “All Messed Up.”

Perhaps the two best songs on Beautiful Disorder are grouped together at tracks six and seven. “How Does It Feel” is your typical song about a girl getting you down, but it is pretty catchy. The best song of the eleven comes next with “Had Enough of You.” The song has similar subject matter to “How Does It Feel,” but this song rocks much harder and definitely has the best chorus of all eleven tracks. Track eight “Never Walk Away” has some extremely cool verses, but the song becomes a bit monotonous on the chorus. The next two songs “Nothing Left At All” and “Reality Show” just seem like album filler and nothing is particularly impressive about either song. The album closes out with “Killing With Kindness,” another potential single on the disc. The song is definitely one of the better tracks of the eleven total, but it does not serve well as an album finisher and it would have been better to place it somewhere in the middle.

Overall, not a lot is beautiful about Beautiful Disorder. There is really nothing original or innovative about the album as the band sticks to a tired formula that has produced a lackluster collection of songs. A lot of the songs sound the same and many of them also don’t have much lasting appeal. Having said that, Beautiful Disorder does contain about four solid songs, the best being “Had Enough of You” and “Killing With Kindness.” However though, for an album that contains eleven songs and carries a price tag of around sixteen dollars (Canadian), four good songs just doesn’t cut it.  [ END ]

Track Listing:

01. Show Me a Sign
02. Don’t Let Go
03. All Messed Up
04. Promise Keeper
05. Goodbye to You
06. How Does it Feel
07. Had Enough of You
08. Never Walk Away
09. Nothing Left At All
10. Reality Show
11. Killing With Kindness

Run Time: 38:45