Evanescence Fallen Music
by Evanescence

Bring me to Life is my fave of this album. Deep, and interesting.

This album was the watershed for modern gothic rock. Amy Lee's classically educated and dark sensibilities combined perfectly with Ben Moody's growling guitar (you can tell it was their first widely released album - he seemed to use just the one guitar on it with only minor treatments). The second track 'Bring Me To Life' found world-wide fame and massive radio play and will be played in bars in Bangkok side by side with the Cranberries 'Zombie' forever more.

Shaded only by the first track 'Going Under' with that undeniable chord riff which goes most of the way through the song the album is chocka with anxst-ridden and borderline depressive sentiment and plenty of considerations surrounding impending mortality. Further highlights include the other air-played, significant single 'My Imortal' - One of two of Amy's piano ballads complete with orchestral backing which grace the album, a well constructed and thoughtful offering. 'Tourniquet' and 'Taking Over Me' are equally well organised and lyrically interesting moments.

Suffice to say I take this album with me everwhere and have played it innumerble times. alas, Ben had a brainectomy and left the band just as it was reaching an echelon immediately after its realease amid unsubstantiated rumours and went off to play inexplicable main-stream stuff much to the chagrin of perplexed fans everywhere.

Luckily for us devout followers of true gothic rock (not emo; that is something for young people and I don't know what it is anyway) the band has gone on to produce two more fine albums with some line-up changes which didn't appear to deter or distract Amy from generating some of the best tracks of the genre and establishing herself as perhaps the most refined and high-quality songwriters in the US today.

It is a reflection of the very high regard that I have for her as a songwriter and super-talented vocalist that after hearing the first tracks on the radio and before I bought the first CD, I thought that she simply had to be English because almost no-one in the US was either intersted or capable of producing such a high quality musical achievement. Perhaps further evidence that despite the enormous mountain of commercial detritus excreted from the US audio industry maybe America is finally growing a soul. Let's hope.