Memento Mori — Flyleaf

Memento Mori is the second album by Flyleaf, the hard rock band from central Texas. A&M/Octone released it on November 10, 2009, four years after the band's self-titled debut went platinum. The title is Latin for "remember you will die," and the fourteen songs keep coming back to that idea. There's death on almost every page of the lyric sheet, and there's resurrection waiting at the end of it.

The story

Flyleaf went back to Howard Benson, who'd produced the debut, and recorded at Bay 7 Studios in Valley Village, California. The lineup was the same five people as before. Lacey Sturm, credited at the time as Lacey Mosley, sang. Sameer Bhattacharya and Jared Hartmann played guitar, Pat Seals played bass and James Culpepper played drums. Seals also drew illustrations for the album artwork. You can read more about the band on the Flyleaf band page.

Just before they finished the record, the band went to Afghanistan to play for American troops, and they tried out "Chasm" and "Circle" there. One stop was a remote base where they played an acoustic set for a few dozen soldiers. Lacey later said the trip kept reminding them they were mortal, which is exactly what the album's title means.

"Again" went to radio as the first single on August 25, 2009, and the band also has official videos for "Beautiful Bride" and "Missing." The album opened at number eight on the Billboard 200, selling 56,000 copies in its first week, and it went straight to number one on Billboard's Christian albums chart.

The sound

The big change from the debut is that the screaming mostly goes away. Jen Rose at Jesus Freak Hideout noticed that "the screamo tendencies are toned down this time around," but said Lacey had "lost none of the intensity of earlier work." What replaces the screams is a bigger, cleaner, more polished hard rock sound. Cross Rhythms heard "crisp guitars and layers of sound that really fill your speakers," in place of the raw distortion of "I'm So Sick." Ian Webber, who wrote that review, said Lacey's "haunting and mysterious vocals" give the songs "an alternative edge" that stops them turning into "a saccharin pop rock outing." He found her lyrics "gritty and sometimes dark" and called the album "ripe for radio play."

James Christopher Monger at AllMusic put it best. He said the record swaps the "raw, punk-infused angst" of the debut for "a thick, punchy theatricality that is as progressive as it is radio-ready." He also said that, musically at least, it owes more to King's X than to the "moody atmospherics" of Evanescence. And he had the finest line anyone wrote about Lacey's voice. She "can build a city with a single soaring note and then tear it down with a lone caterwaul."

"Beautiful Bride" opens the album with a marching beat and a wall of guitar, and its chorus is about the "beautiful bride, body of Christ." Rose called it "an unapologetic battle cry" and wondered if it might be "'Jesus Freak' for a new generation." "Again" is the moody single, all big waves of rhythm. "Missing" is the poppiest thing here, and "The Kind" is the opposite. Rose said, "If a panic attack were a song, this might be it."

The heart of the record

The middle of the album is where it earns its title. "In the Dark" starts soft and pained and builds to a prayer: "Jesus, heal me and save me / Raise me up to live again / Like You did." Then "Set Apart This Dream" comes in with a soaring guitar solo, and the record turns from death towards life. Rose named those two as her favourites, and they're ours too. Logan Leasure, writing a second opinion for the same site, singled out "Set Apart This Dream" and "Swept Away" as the songs where the raw emotion comes through most.

"Treasure" is a love song and a worship song at once, and Rose called it "one of the most beautiful and encouraging songs they've written." The closer, "Arise," which Monger called "alternately laid-back and elegiac," ends the album on hope instead of the grave.

What the critics said

Reviews were good but not glowing. Metacritic's average was 69. Jesus Freak Hideout gave it 3.5 out of 5, and Rose called it "a wonderful progression for a talented band," one that mixes a current style "with lyrical honesty that doesn't feel sentimental, 'emo,' or preachy." Cross Rhythms called it "a step up from their debut release."

The main complaint was length. Rose felt some songs "get lost in the album's fourteen track runtime," and she struggled with "Tiny Heart," "Chasm" and "Circle." Monger said that with so many songs that "bust out the gate with guns blazing," they could be "hard to differentiate." But he said the band had come "awfully close to finding and defining their voice."

Trey Spencer at Sputnikmusic was tougher. He called "Beautiful Bride" "a terrible song to open Memento Mori with" and "easily the worst track on the album." He liked the poppier turn, which he said "enhances the strongest element of the band's sound," meaning the choruses, and he compared "Missing" to Paramore. But he found some of the heavier riffs "awkward and disjointed," pointed to "This Close" as an example, and summed it up as "one step forward but two steps back." Even so, he called it "a good album."

The verdict

We side with the believers here, mostly. Memento Mori is too long, and a few songs blur into each other, just as the critics said. But it's a big, confident rock album that put the gospel at number eight on the Billboard 200, and Lacey Sturm sings it like her life depends on it. "Beautiful Bride" is a better opener than Sputnikmusic allowed, "In the Dark" and "Set Apart This Dream" are the best pair of songs Flyleaf ever put back to back, and "Arise" sends you out on the right note. Start with the video for "Again," then put on the whole thing from the top.

7/10

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