Fallen – Evanescence– 2003

Claimed Sales: 17m

First listen?: No

Format Listened?: Apple Music

It’s strange to imagine the time where the worldwide general public became obsessed with a Nu Metal, gothic, operatic rock band from Arkansas, but one listen to lead single Bring Me To Life and I’m taken right back to 2003. It’s a spectacular rock song, that manages to smash genres together, the rapping of the middle 8, the operatic vocals on the chorus, the heavy metal crashes of drums and guitar; it’s a hard rock song that was made to be screamed along to in your room. The trio of singles that open the album in fact all sound huge still, Everybody’s Fool picking apart the idea of celebrity and Going Under taking a surprisingly surface deep approach to a difficult relationship. Saying that Fallen is a predictable record would be an understatement. Outside of one or two outliers, every single song on the album follows the mould of these singles. The outliers are definitely the piano led Hello and one of the band’s most well known singles My Immortal. Both are welcome relief from the relentless heaviness of everything, but somehow the version of My Immortal here feels underwhelming next to single version where the rest of the band join in for a dramatic final minute. The most important thing to mention though is Amy Lee. Without her, Fallen would fall completely flat. Without her incredibly moving and theatrical vocal performance songs like My Last Breath, Taking Over Me, Tourniquet and Haunted would crumble under their predictability and unadventurous Nu-Metal sound. Of the 11 songs here, 9 of them literally sound like different vocals over the same backing track. It makes those key moments; the thrilling middle 8 of Bring Me To Life; the choir on closer Whisper and the piercing vocals of My Immortal so much more important as without them Fallen would genuinely start to sound boring. Evanescence certainly captured a specific sound on their debut album, it’s just a shame that as an album it’s just too predictable to be considered a classic of the genre.

Rating: 7/10

Will I listen again?: I’ll probably go back to the big hits here.

Best Track: I love the full band version of My Immortal, but for sheer spectacle and drama Bring Me To Life remains one of the best UK #1 hits of the 00s.