For us ShockYa writers on the East Coast, Hurricane Irene has severed our Internet connection to you readers. Fortunately, we were able to escape the power outages on Long Island and head on over to the Big Apple, where our wires were free of damage. We have plenty to update you music fans on. What better band to start with than the latest Breaking Benjamin news? The legendary alternative rock band dropped their compilation album, “Shallow Bay: The Best of Breaking Benjamin” on August 16th via Hollywood Records. The recent release includes an entire second disc of rare recordings, unreleased songs, live performances, acoustic recordings and remixes.

Just about a week after the album’s street date, Hollywood Records released the official video for the track, “Blow Me Away”, which is the lead remixed tune off of “Shallow Bay: The Best of Breaking Benjamin”. The new take on the song features the vocals of Syd Duran of the band Valora, which is currently in the Top 10 of the active rock radio charts.

Directed by Chris Mills (Modest Mouse, Metric), the music video is made up of animated graphics and cut and paste imagery. Primarily dark and muted colors, the scenery of “Blow Me Away” paints a picture of a battle scene with war iconography. The images definitely do not paint a realistic scene, but an extremely creative one that would compile to form the most awesome comic book. Who knows, maybe that’s the next direction the band should branch out in. How cool would it be to flip through Breaking Benjamin graphics, while listening to their tunes?

by Lonnie Nemiroff