Despite an overall tone that ranges from forlorn to darkly poetic, a few cuts are somewhat optimistic (“Bring Me to Life,” “My Last Breath,” “Whisper,” “Taking Over Me”). On “Everybody’s Fool,” lead singer Amy Lee washes her hands of a betrayer given over to deception. She also sheds the weight of an unspecified relationship that’s dragging her down on “Going Under.” In passing, “Tourniquet” alludes to God and Christ as sources of “deliverance” and “salvation,” however …
Despondent young fans may be confused by lines such as “My wounds cry for the grave” and “Will you be on the other side or will you forget me … am I too lost to be saved?” (that track also refers to Christ as “my suicide”). The creepy “Haunted” paints Lee as “hollow inside,” trapped by an oppressive person (“I can feel you pull me down/Saving me, raping me, watching me”).
For a group that was once identified as “Christian,” Fallen dwells on darkness and inner turmoil without a lot of uplift. Granted, not all of life is sunshine and roses, but Evanescence seeks refuge from chaos in sleep, daydreams and (on “My Last Breath”) death. God shows up like a fuzzy blip on the lyrical radar. The result is a cryptic, grim effort that hones in on the problem, not the solution.
