Collection: Breaking Benjamin
Featured Judge & Jury collaborator: Breaking Benjamin
Breaking Benjamin and STARSET unite on “Waiting on the Sky to Change,” a cinematic hard-rock collaboration released by Judge & Jury Records. STARSET vocalist Dustin Bates opens the song before Breaking Benjamin frontman Benjamin Burnley takes the second verse, with their voices meeting in a massive, atmospheric chorus.
Released on August 19, 2022, the single transforms a song from Bates’ former band Downplay into a meeting point between STARSET’s electronic, science-fiction atmosphere and Breaking Benjamin’s dark alternative-metal power.
About Breaking Benjamin
Breaking Benjamin is an American hard-rock band formed in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, in 1999 by singer, guitarist and principal songwriter Benjamin Burnley. The group broke nationally with Saturate in 2002 and expanded its audience through albums including We Are Not Alone, Phobia, Dear Agony, Dark Before Dawn, Ember and the collaborative reimagining project Aurora.
The band’s musical style blends hard rock, post-grunge, alternative metal and nu metal. Heavy, down-tuned guitars and tense verses give way to large melodic choruses, while Burnley’s gritty voice and introspective writing focus on isolation, illness, conflict, endurance and the will to survive. Songs such as “So Cold,” “The Diary of Jane,” “Breath,” “I Will Not Bow” and “Failure” helped establish Breaking Benjamin as one of the defining acts of modern active rock.
Although Burnley remains the band’s creative center, the lineup assembled in 2014 deepened Breaking Benjamin’s vocal and guitar arrangements. Guitarist Jasen Rauch is especially important to the STARSET connection because he co-wrote the original version of “Waiting on the Sky to Change” with Dustin Bates years before joining Breaking Benjamin.
The history behind the STARSET and Breaking Benjamin collaboration
“Waiting on the Sky to Change” began with Downplay, the band Dustin Bates fronted before founding STARSET. Bates and Jasen Rauch wrote the song for Downplay’s 2011 album Beyond the Machine. Rauch later became a guitarist in Breaking Benjamin, giving the 2022 recording a direct link to the song’s origin.
The two bands already shared a natural audience and a history of touring together, including a U.S. run in spring 2022. That relationship led to a full re-recording rather than a simple guest feature. Burnley’s second verse and shared choruses add Breaking Benjamin’s emotional weight to STARSET’s cinematic arrangement, while Rauch performs the guitar and bass parts on a composition he helped create.
The song’s message is about persistence: refusing to keep seeking temporary shelter inside a destructive cycle and choosing to endure until conditions truly change. That balance of darkness, resolve and transformation fits both bands’ catalogs and helped the collaboration become a major active-rock success.
“Waiting on the Sky to Change” release and credits
- Artists: STARSET, Breaking Benjamin and Judge & Jury
- Release date: August 19, 2022
- Vocals: Dustin Bates and Benjamin Burnley
- Written by: Dustin Bates and Jasen Rauch
- Produced by: Dustin Bates and Joe Rickard
- Executive producers: Howard Benson and Neil Sanderson
- Mixed and programmed by: Joe Rickard
- Mastered by: Ted Jensen
- Guitars and bass: Jasen Rauch
- Drums: Luke Holland
- Violin: Siobhán Richards
- Cello: Zuzana Engererova
- Additional programming: Jay Wud
- Digital editing: Paul DeCarli
- Guitar engineering: Mike Plotnikoff
- Drum engineering: Dave Schiffman
- Label: Judge & Jury Records
Official and press links
- Official release details and credits on STARSET’s Bandcamp
- Breaking Benjamin official website
- Breaking Benjamin official discography
- “Waiting on the Sky to Change” on Apple Music
- ThePRP: STARSET and Breaking Benjamin collaboration announcement
- NEPA Scene: collaboration feature
- Breaking Benjamin biography on AllMusic
Artist image: official Breaking Benjamin promotional photography.
