Breaking Benjamin released “Sooner or Later” as a U.S. promotional single on September 28, 2004. The second single from We Are Not Alone followed “So Cold,” giving the Pennsylvania band another song to work as its audience expanded beyond the listeners who had discovered its debut.
The track had first appeared on the album that June. Benjamin Burnley, guitarist Aaron Fink, bassist Mark Klepaski and drummer Jeremy Hummel shared its songwriting credits, with David Bendeth producing. Fink and Klepaski had previously played in Lifer, leaving a band with a major label deal to join Burnley and Hummel. Fink later told Radio & Records that he already knew Burnley’s writing well and heard commercial potential in his songs before joining. Playing together convinced him to make the move.
For Burnley, making the second album meant rethinking how those songs were assembled. In a July 2005 interview with The Aquarian Weekly, he explained that Bendeth challenged the placement of individual sections and encouraged him to write replacements. Burnley had often relied on a familiar sequence of verses, choruses and a bridge. The producer’s questions pushed him to consider other possibilities while keeping the songwriting in the band’s hands.
“We just looked for different ways to arrange music,” Burnley said. He also described a change in the material itself: the first record leaned on invented stories, while We Are Not Alone drew more directly from his own experiences.
“So Cold” gave that approach its first substantial audience. By the time “Sooner or Later” entered its main radio campaign, the earlier single was still receiving significant airplay. Hollywood Records targeted rock, active rock and alternative stations with the follow up during the first week of January 2005. Radio & Records subsequently reported that it had the largest increase in plays at both active rock and alternative in its January 14 issue.
That overlap helped extend the album’s campaign into another year. Reviewing “Sooner or Later” later that month, Billboard’s Bram Teitelman noted that “So Cold” remained in the top 10 at modern and active rock after eight months. The band was introducing its next single while stations were still playing the previous one.
The song also took on a different role in Breaking Benjamin’s live show after the band returned with a new lineup in 2014. Guitarist Keith Wallen, who had previously crossed paths with Burnley while touring with Copper, became one of the musicians able to share vocal duties. Having additional singers allowed the band to reproduce layered vocals and occasionally change who sang lead.
Burnley asked Wallen to take the microphone for “Sooner or Later.” In a July 2019 interview with RIFF Magazine, Wallen admitted that the prospect initially frightened him.
“I thought people were going to throw things at me,” he said. Instead, he found the audience receptive. A song originally recorded with Burnley singing had become part of Wallen’s role onstage, with the frontman himself making the handoff.
