The Grammy season is upon us, and I as I sat pondering this
\nyears nominees, my thoughts went to years past, specifically last
\nyear. Last year was really the first ime I started taking note of
\nthe Grammys, and actually had listened to music nominated. One such
\nexample is Evanescence. They ended up winning the award for Best
\nNew Artist, and Best Hard Rock Performance based on their
\nperformance on
\nFallen<\/i>. Were they deserving of those accolades? I can’t say,
\nbut nevertheless
\nFallen<\/i> is an enjoyable piece of music.<\/p>\n
\nFallen<\/i> was an album of firsts for me — it was the first
\nalbum that led me to realize there was some good music out there
\nthat was made after 1976, and it inspired me to go to my first
\nconcert where the band members weren’t collecting Social Security.
\nSo, you must be thinking to yourself, “Man, he must have really
\nliked this album then.” Hold on there sport. It isn’t that good. It
\nmerely awoke the sleeping giant.<\/p>\n
The first thing that struck me when
\nFallen<\/i> got its first play in the discman was that Amy Lee,
\nlead vocalist\/pianist, could flat out sing. Granted, my knowledge
\nof female singers is very limited, but of all the women lead
\nsingers I have heard, Amy Lee is the best. She has an incredible
\nrange, something lacking in the female pop stars today (Take that
\nBritney Spears!). Whether it is a creepy, haunted vocal on
\n“Haunted,” a heart breaking song of loss, “My Immortal” or balls
\nout rock “Going Under,” Lee can do it all.<\/p>\n
See, that covers the vocals, what about the rest? Well boys and
\ngirls, that is where the album falls down a bit on the job. I like
\nsome of the production techniques used, there are a lot of backing
\nstrings, ancient monk-style chants and drum loops, the latter of
\nwhich is very reminiscent of Linkin Park. However, after the
\nseventh song that uses these sounds, it gets old quick. The same
\ngoes with the There are two gorgeous piano ballads from Lee, who
\nagain proves that she is unquestionably the rock of the band. The
\nbacking band of lead guitarist Ben Moody, guitarist John LeCompt,
\nand drummer Rock Gray are adequate, though Moody does come up with
\na few good riffs.<\/p>\n
The big single, and award-winning song off
\nFallen<\/i> is “Bring Me To Life,” which despite its blatant
\ncommercialism, is a good song. It features arguably the best guitar
\nriff off the album, as well as one of the more compelling Lee
\nvocals. However, the inclusion of Paul McCoy of 12 Stones annoyed
\nthe hell out of me. This duet should never had happened; the
\ncontrast of the voices is too distracting. Yes, I know the point of
\na duet is to have two vocalists, but the band\/producer, whoever
\nshould have found a better complement to Lee.<\/p>\n
The big controversy over
\nFallen<\/i> and Evanescence was whether it was goth rock, or as
\nsome though, Christian rock. Lyrically, there are numerous
\nreferences to God, and religion, but not enough blatantly scream,
\n“Hey, singing about Jesus here!” The rest of the album deals with
\npain, sorrow, sadness, and ____(add synonym of previous words
\nhere). People tell me that this is standard “goth rock” fare,
\nhowever I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and hope they come
\nup with better material on the next album.<\/p>\n
If Amy Lee wasn’t present on this album, it would get a D+, or
\nmaybe if I was feeling generous, a C-. However, because I find her
\nperformance so enrapturing and amazing, she ups the Grade to a B-
\n(Conversely, it’s a good thing my teachers don’t grade me based on
\nmy singing ability, I’d probably be at home eating Cheetos watching<\/p>\n
American Idol<\/i>). Evanescence can do better than this, they
\njust need to incorporate some new styles into their original sound,
\nand with Lee on the lead mic, anything is possible.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":26443,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[6891],"rating":[5612],"class_list":["post-38248","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-evanescence","rating-rating-b-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/38248","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38248"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/38248\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26443"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38248"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=38248"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=38248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}