Bam's Music Reviews: Fallen (Evanescence, 2003)
I'm Bam. I like possums, I like music! Let's get into it~
Fallen is the debut album by alternate metal band Evanescence, released on March 4th, 2003 through Wind-Up Records. Recorded over the course of four months in late 2002, the album was marred by executive meddling, including turning the lead single, "Bring Me To Life", from an electronic metal track into nu-metal style rap rock. Despite fairly high sales, two of its tracks featuring in the soundtrack of the movie Daredevil, and generally positive praise from critics at the time, the album is more so known for many internet memes associated with some of its tracks (Wake Me Up Inside and the My Immortal fanfic being the two biggest ones that I'm personally familiar with). With the album receiving a 20th anniversary remaster (that happened to be released today as of the writing of this review!), a big question has to be asked: has this album stood the test of time and does it work as an alt-metal album, or should its legacy be relegated to internet edgelords from the early 2010s? Only one way to find out! Without further ado...
I have to come clean: initially, I approached this review with somewhat unfair expectations, fully prepared to brush it off as some lame attempt to win the Linkin Park crowd of the early 2000s. While in some aspects this did end up holding true (I'll get to it in a bit), I was pleasantly surprised to find that I actually ended up liking this album a decent bit! Although the sound of the album has certainly become dated over time, there's still a lot of good to squeeze out of this bad girl even today, with the biggest highlight being Amy Lee's beautiful vocals. Regardless of what track she's on, she's really putting her heart and soul into her performances, going from deeper heartfelt lyrics on tracks like "Happy" to powerful, almost power metal-esque performances on tracks like "Going Under" and "Tourniquet". Her performances are one of the key reasons I really like this album.
A perfect example of Lee's performing capabilities is on one of the big tracks off the album, "My Immortal". Despite the regular version on the album being an instance of the executives going against Lee's own wishes, the track's somber piano melody mixed with Lee's haunting vocals makes the track one of the best on the album, with the choruses being the key points for me. The hidden "Band Version" that appears on later pressings of the album as well as the Spotify release takes many of the lesser elements and turns them up to 11, gutwrenchingly making one of the best tracks on the entire album a hidden post-release addition. Sorry, Amy.
Unfortunately, many of the remaining elements on the album, while not sounding bad necessarily, have aged quite a bit as mentioned earlier. This can be particularly heard on tracks like "Going Under" and "Haunted", where the instrumentation is at points quite painfully early-2000s. What certainly doesn't help the tracks stand out is the fact that a lot of the other elements are drowned out in the mix by loud nu-metal guitars repeating 2-3 power chords over the course of the full track. "Going Under" in particular would sound like your run-of-the-mill nu-metal cover band of the era.
I think what's disappointing is that a decent bit of the issues come in the mixing of the album. Had the guitars been mixed a bit lower and some of the other instruments (piano in particular) been brought up, the album would've had even more going for it than it has right now. This can be seen on tracks like "My Last Breath" which has more electronic and industrial sounds mixed in that sadly disappear almost completely once the farty guitars come in. Another issue that arises from this is that some tracks kinda end up bleeding into one another. I wouldn't be surprised at all if many of the mixing issues were a result of executive fuckery.
Speaking of executive fuckery! It's about time I bring up the big one. "Bring Me To Life", the lead single of the album. Surprise surprise, I really don't like the version that's on the album! Not only do I think the instrumentation sounds particularly cheesy and dated, but the obvious has to be stated: the rapping is hilariously bad and unnecessary. All it serves to do is to take a song with really touching and relatable origins, and lyrics that could normally bring a tear to one's eye, into a corny mess that would normally be unlistenable if it weren't for the ridiculous meme factor. The amount of edgy memes and AMVs that used this track over the years makes my old internet soul heal. (For those wondering, my favorite use of the song in that context has to be the legendary "Tribute to Anomalocaris".) If you ever want to listen to a proper version of the track, the 20th-anniversary album features a demo version of the track that is infinitely better, and I would also recommend the version that appears on their 2017 album Synthesis.
Fallen is an album that is somewhat hard to recommend these days. While I personally ended up enjoying a lot of its elements, that's mainly because I'm someone who doesn't usually have a huge issue with dated sounds or genres. It's absolutely not an album I would recommend to people who are getting into nu-metal of the era, though veterans might get some kicks out of it. Evanescence is still going strong to this day, and Amy only seems to sing even better today than she did 20 years ago. Here's to another 20 years! Now if you'll excuse me, I'll have to go grab another GIR plush from my local Hot Topic before I get my 19th lip piercing! i'm sorry i had to go for at least one emo joke i just couldn't resist
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