2003’s “Flavor of the Year” band is Evanescence, a band that refuses to act as background music. Their new album Fallen is searing, intense, crowded with special effects and booming guitars.

Their lead vocalist and lyricist Amy Lee is a force to be reckoned with. Her clarion call vocals trumpet through the band's wall-of-sound approach with surprising sincerity and an avoidance of the breath-y, sex-drenched style of most Top 40 divas. She’s doesn’t strain and sigh and over-emote. And she has a lot of range, singing the low goth-hush rants, the full-throated soaring anthems, and the sweet ballad croons without flinching.

What she might still achieve… well… more on that later.

Reviews and hype had told me to expect “hard rock”, as it is often classified. And the word "goth" gets thrown around too. Evanescence is certainly loud, yes, and the lyrics come from characters trapped in dark places. But their sound is a shade too produced and polished to really qualify as “rock’n’roll.” There aren’t many surprises and they take few risks. There aren’t many rough edges or flaws allowed. Let’s call it what it is: pop music, pure and simple—formulaic, catchy, bite-sized, albeit noisy.

But as pop, it’s pretty potent stuff. Although I was at first put off by its commercial glossiness, some of the songs have gotten their hooks into me and made me a reluctant believer.

“Going Under” and “Bring Me to Life” are knockout singles, sure to survive their first radio runs to become hard rock staples, teen anthem signatures of the year 2003 the way “Smells Like Teen Spirit” ruled the early 90s. The first song is a suicidal cry of despair, like a midnight lament from the heart of Gotham City. The second is a prayer … in the “Madonna sense.” It’s a sea of strings and growling guitars, backing up Lee’s plea for love both carnal and divine:

Wake me up inside
Wake me up inside
Call my name and save me from the dark
Bid my blood to run before I come undone
Save me from the nothing I’ve become
Bring me to life….

In “Everybody’s Fool”, they set themselves apart from the gaudy-façade/empty-interior celebrity culture by declaiming the heavy makeup and soulless substance of other pop idols:

Look here she comes now
Bow down and stare in wonder
Oh how we love you
No flaws when you’re pretending
But now I know she
Never was and never will be
You don’t know how you’ve betrayed me
And somehow you’ve got everybody fooled

Without the mask where will you hide
Can’t find yourself, lost in your lie.

It could be about Britney, Christina, or J-Lo, but I think Madonna is the obvious target here—and not merely because of the cracks forming in the material girl's now-middle-aged makeup. The song's sound seems directly lifted from Madonna’s “Like a Prayer,” perhaps the ultimate example of how pop snatches and exploits religious music. There’s the rich choral backdrop, the driving rhythm, the gospel flourishes … it’s a wonderfully subversive reprimand, intentional or otherwise.

As if appealing for more credibility, Amy turns down the volume with “My Immortal”, a Sarah McLachlan-esque power-piano ballad resonant with strings. Again, we have a love song that teases us with suggestions that this is a prayer to the missing Christ, or perhaps a loved-one that has passed on. But the expected consolation that would come at the end of a “Christian song” never comes; instead we get this troubling refrain: “I’ve tried to hard to tell myself that you’re gone / And though you’re still with me / I’ve been alone all along….”

“Haunted” uses some violent language to describe the relentlessness of the spirit pursuing her. For a while I was convinced this was about the affliction of an evil spirit, until the juxtaposition “saving me … raping me” came along, and another tidal wave of choral refrains crashed in. Suddenly the song came clear as continuing in the tradition of “Batter my heart, three-personed God", by John Donne:

Donne's beautiful and disturbing prayer for the spirit of God to come and use force, to “ravish him,” makes Lee's version of the same idea look heavy-handed and a little indulgent, but still, it’s not to be scoffed at. This is a potential Top 40 radio single we're examining here.

What has turned me around in view of the band is their willingness to take the drama of good versus evil, the epic of salvation, out of its bland and sterilized “Christian-ese”, returning it to the visceral, bodily, violent language of its most passionate and memorable apologists. Lee could use a few courses in poetry to refine her craft and develop more subtlety, but she is clearly studying that ancient path, and schooling a new generation in the language of God’s love, underlining the basic need for salvation. In “Tourniquet”, my favorite track, Lee wails, ““My God, my tourniquet / return to me salvation / My wounds cry for the grave / my soul cries for deliverance / Will I be denied Christ / Tourniquet / My suicide…”

The brows of conscientious listeners might furrow at the centrality of suicide in these lyrics. And I too am concerned about how these sentiments will be interpreted by wounded young listeners. But listen closely. Scripture itself is full of charges to take up our cross, to “die to ourselves” and live to salvation. That does not mean taking one’s own life, but rather surrendering it to a higher purpose. As if fully conscious of this possible misinterpretation, the band wraps things up with “Whisper”, encouraging the listener, “Don’t turn away / don’t give in to the pain … don’t turn out the light / never sleep never die.”

The first word that comes to mind listening to an artist or a band is not to be ignored. Nor are the second and third. Hearing Gillian Welch, for the first time, I thought “honesty.” Soon after, “Genuine.” “Intimate.” “Joy.” Hearing Over the Rhine, I thought, “Soulful.” Then, “Poetry.” And then, “Psalms.” Sixpence None the Richer struck me first as “Polished pop.” But then, “Intently serious” and “exploratory”, leading to “a spiritual diary.”

When I first came to Evanescence, my first impression was “Produced.” That’s unfortunate. Artists that I find engaging and appealing invite me to listen to a person, not a product. Listening to this album, I feel as though someone is trying to impress me with layer-upon-layer of studio-perfected pyrotechnics. They sound like songs from commercials, or songs to be used during the end credits of popular but disposable action movies. Those guitar sounds are sonorous, big, polished … but they are also indistinct. They don’t have a personality of their own. It’s the same kind of buzz you hear all over Top 40 radio and television.

The second thought that came to mind: “It’s all crescendo.” Let me explain that one. Great rock bands like U2, Over the Rhine, and R.E.M. modulate their sound so that occasionally they can really blow us away by building to something enormous. Most of Evanescence’s songs strike me as pinnacle-preoccupied, with only occasional drops into shadowy lowland. While the lyrics lend themselves to contemplation, there's little chance of that happening when the music is all about catharsis. After a while, I tune out because they have pushed their sound to the max so much, so long, that nothing stands out anymore. Piano interludes that signal the “quiet time” part of the song, the meditative moment, only seem to exist to signal that soon we will be rising back up to the roaring finale part of the song.

Evanescence do, however, put more emphasis on melody than most bands of their ilk, and if they continue to invest themselves in that, working on quality of each element rather than merely shooting for quantity and higher decibel levels, than they might discover a more unique and arresting personality under all the sound and fury.

Their future as a band is uncertain. Are they built to last? I’m told they have been at this for a while, but I am unable to comment at this time on past efforts. It seems to me there is a lot of room for growth and deepening of their spiritual searches in future efforts. When you boil this one down, it’s basically a desperate cry for help and not much more than that. They’re a young band. If Amy Lee and her bandmates really want to make a lasting mark—and I mean a mark on hearts and minds, not a mark on the pop charts—they will dig deeper for those things that are distinctly theirs to share with us. Their lyrics will become more particular, not so prone to grand sweeping gestures. They will take risks that will probably not register on any chart, but will grab the attention of those really listening because they will be unique, with the qualities of a human expression and not an MTV product.

Lee’s voice is intensely powerful, and yet she has not yet found her voice. I have yet to hear her sing in such a way that familiarizes me with the person, with the quiet subtleties of emotion and experience, that make a voice like Karen Bergquist’s recognizable. Leigh Nash of Sixpence None the Richer is learning more and more to sing quietly, meditatively, and to invest herself in the louder numbers in a distinctly personal way.

In the grand tradition of Amy Grant and Sam Phillips, Evanescence have become the latest band to suffer the scandal of "Are they or aren't they a Christian band." On that subject, I have very little to say.

You may have heard about the scandal: the incident in which they did a high-profile interview (with Entertainment Weekly’s best music reporter Chris Willman) and conspicuously cussed and expressed contempt for the Christian music industry. That was unfortunate for two reasons: One, it made them seem like arrogant adolescents. Two, it gave easily-offended Christians a chance to show that they really aren’t very capable with the fact that Christians are sinners and make mistakes, and that they think of themselves as “above” the sins of others. When Christian music stores pulled Evanescence off of their shelves after the incident, all they did was affirm to outsiders that, yes, the Church really doesn’t accept imperfections in people, and yes they are legalistic, impatient, easily-provoked, and quick to anger… all those things that Scripture tells us love isn’t. Bad for both the band and the believers.

If the Christian music industry wants their artists to be relevant again, they need to quit condemning artists who offer honest and rough-edged human expressions. Otherwise, they give the false notion that "Christian musicians" should be perfect. In demanding that Christian artists live up to a certain checklist of behaviors, they have hindered art and driven off some of their own most formidable talents and poets: Bob Dylan, Sam Phillips, and recently Sixpence None the Richer.

If Evanescence's members want to be treated like artists instead of merely entertainers, they should focus on art not image, craftsmanship and not commercial success. If they want to have any credibility singing something like “Everybody’s Fool”, they’d best not become those fools themselves.

So yeah, this band is to be taken seriously. They are continuing an admirable tradition of intense spiritual metaphor and artistry. But they also have a lot of growing up—and opening up—to do.