We Are The Fallen

I never really cared for or about American Idol except to watch the people who can't sing early in each season. However, a couple of years ago, I couldn't help but pay attention to Carly Smithson, the tattooed songstress with an Irish accent. It's probably best that she finished 6th instead of winning, otherwise the show probably would have tried to mold her into a pop singer, which didn't result in commercial success for her the first time they tried it (at right). I've been watching since the season ended to see what she might end up doing. Apparently she was working on an album when she hooked up with John LeCompt and Ben Moody, both formerly of Evanescence (it's reported that her solo album hasn't been abandoned).

To give some background, I first heard of Evanescence in 1998 when I bought a sampler CD at Cornerstone Music Festival. They had the best song on the CD, an epic goth number called Understanding. At this time, the band was still only Amy Lee and Ben Moody. I wrote to the company that put out the compilation, Brad Caviness' BigWig Enterprises, to find if they had any albums out. It turns out that they didn't yet, but that fall they released what is now the infamous Evanescence EP.

If you do an internet search on this title, you will find that there were only 100 official copies, and a claim that they were all sold in one night at a show in Little Rock. I know they couldn't have sold more than 99 copies that night because I was able to mail order one from Brad Caviness. In 2003, when Bring Me To Life was released as a single from the Daredevil Soundtrack, people were desperate to hear move Evanescence and I sold my copy of this CD for more than $350 on eBay (after ripping the WAV files of course). The value of this disc resulted in a lot of fake copies finding their way onto eBay as well.

David Hodges joined Ben and Amy in 1999 and they released Origin in 2000. This album ends up basically as a demo for Fallen, but by the time that album was released, David Hodges had moved on and John LeCompt had joined the group on guitar and Rocky Gray (Living Sacrifice) on drums. As it stands now, Evanescence has no original members with the exception of Amy Lee on lead vocals.

Comparisons are inevitable, then, now that Ben Moody, John LeCompt, Rocky Gray, and Marty O'Brien on bass (Disturbed), have started We Are the Fallen with Carly Smithson. Evanescence fans are already on the attack, complaining that WATF is an Evanescence wannabe. Similarities in sound are unavoidable. WATF (it strikes me this isn't the best abbreviation for the group's name) has more Evanescence members than Evanescence does (unless you go back to the ORIGINAL original lineup, in which case it's 50/50). For my part, I'm just happy to see Carly Smithson with a musical outlet far from American Idol, although without that show, we might not have the good fortune of hearing her. The more rock bands with strong female lead vocals, the better.