Review Summary: Fallenmania, Part 22
Now that’s the kind of fallenmaniac follow-up I was looking for! With “Memento Mori”, Flyleaf released their most ambitious album, with faster, heavier tracks, more symphonic elements and an overarching theme of bringing a true meaning to your life before you die. It’s their most fallenmaniac album and at the same time their most unique.
There seems to be 2 albums in one, or at least, 2 different types of songs: the simple rock songs we’ve come to expect from Flyleaf and the more complex, mysterious ones. For example, “Beautiful Bride” makes a great opening, with its repeated, ear-wormy main riff, its peculiar vocal melodies, all its little hooks on the chorus like “Fighting ends in forgiveness” and “Unite and fight! all divisions”, as well as its lyrics describing marriage as a sacred ritual, to bring peace between former enemies. It’s almost a symphonic metal type of lyric, even though the song is pure Flyleaf, with its punchy alternative metal-tinged sound. “The Chasm” is even heavier, ending on a sort of high, violin-like sound, and keeps the same kind of biblical, almost Medieval or ancient storytelling. I also love its animated music video with the band being drawn like Medieval illustrations.
Then, we get into the more complex and darker songs, like “The Kind” and its sad verses with a kind of fallenmaniac melody, building up to frantic choruses, and finally, its louder singing and screaming in the last part. Lacey continues to scream in many tracks, although never more than a full sentence. In fact, “Swept Away”, one of the heaviest songs, is introduced with a distorted bass line and her scream, followed by a sort of speak-singing part and powerful chorus about being swept away by this. The whole thing ends with a music box and some other weird sounds. It has a similar bass line to “I’m So Sick” and just like “Breathe Today”, it’s a weird nu metal experiment that seems to be made of different parts that still fit together somehow. She screams more on the chorus of “In the Dark”, a very ambitious track, starting slow but tormented before exploding into the chorus, keeping the same frantic energy and fallenmaniac riff throughout. Those last 2 are the album’s most interesting songs. Even the simpler “Set Apart this Dream” is far from underwhelming, with its quiet to loud tone and chorus I can only describe as soaring, uplifting, and all kinds of similar terms.
It lets me transition easily into the simpler songs of the album, some of which are good and some much less interesting. “Tiny Heart” is a ballad, and just as cutesy as its title would suggest. “Again” is a catchy but ordinary, kind of generic anthem about rising from your ashes. “Arise” is mostly the same, but at least the soaring “Rise and be all that you dreamed” chorus is memorable. “Missing” is also simple but catchier. It tries to bring slightly more poetic lyrics like “Found something sweet on the island with the daughters of Eve”, but we can always feel the main line on the chorus “Something’s missing in me”.
There are some issues with this album. But those are the same problems Flyleaf has always had: their music has always been a little simple and flat. But this is an album where they try to do more than the Flyleaf formula, where they add some new musical elements, where they try to go bigger, with longer, heavier songs with louder emotions, to tell stories and express something deeper than “God is love”. This is what happens when Flyleaf are actually trying. It’s somewhat of an anomaly in their discography in the best of ways. It’s one of their best albums, but in a different way than their self-titled debut which is also one of their best. As I said before, Flyleaf will inevitably be compared to Evanescence, despite their differences, because they started with a similar background and evolved in different directions. However, “Memento Mori” is their most Evanescence-inspired album, one that still feels completely like Flyleaf. It’s the most precious kind of fallenmaniac album, one that can take some of Fallen’s best aspects but do something completely unique. It’s the album that proves Flyleaf was always one of the interesting Evanescence-influenced artists rather than second-rate imitators. Sadly, it was also their last good or successful album, as the last 2 were definitely less interesting, and their career didn’t really survive Lacey’s departure. It’s kind of a sad ending for possibly the best Christian Fallenmaniac, but at least, it proves that not all those acts can blame their downfall on changing trends, a decrease in quality is another important factor. Many of the Fallenmaniacs that survived definitely owe that to their talents, and we are going to look at some of the other good fallenmaniac albums next time.
