Flyleaf released Memento Mori on November 10, 2009, through A&M/Octone Records. Their second studio album reunited the Texas band with producer Howard Benson, who had produced their 2005 debut. This time, the musicians arrived with a clearer idea of how they wanted the finished record to sound, while singer Lacey Sturm was writing with the young people in their audience in mind.
The gap between albums hadn’t been the plan. Bassist Pat Seals told The Gauntlet in October 2009 that the success of “All Around Me” had extended the debut’s touring cycle after the band thought it was winding down. New songs accumulated during that extra time on the road, giving them material to work on while they were still promoting the first record.
Returning to Benson took persuasion, Seals said, but familiarity helped. The band could explain what they wanted changed from the first sessions and prepare arrangements with his working methods in mind. Much of the material consequently survived without major restructuring. “Tiny Heart” was an exception: Benson substantially reworked it, and Seals thought the changes improved the song. He also credited their drummer’s persistence with getting the drum sound right. “I think with Howard, we made the record we should have,” he said.
Sturm’s priorities were tied to the people hearing those songs. In a September 2009 interview with Noisecreep, she described seeing her teenage sister in the young girls at Flyleaf shows. She wanted them to understand that humiliation, heartbreak or trouble didn’t have to determine the rest of their lives. The band had also experienced deaths among loved ones and encounters with mortality during the debut’s touring years. The Latin phrase behind Memento Mori, meaning remember you will die, gave those experiences a common theme: life was finite, and what they did with it mattered.
That concern took a specific form in “Again,” the album’s first single. Sturm told NewReleaseTuesday that she wrote its lyrics outside the tour bus during the Family Values Tour. Fans’ letters and conversations left her carrying their pain alongside her own struggles. She connected the song to her Christian faith and the need to surrender burdens she couldn’t keep carrying.
Seals helped give those ideas a visual form, too. His woodcuts appeared in the “Again” video, and an illustration he created became the starting point for the album packaging. The band took his design to the label, where photographs and woodcut elements were combined. Sturm portrayed the figure reminding a triumphant ruler of his mortality, making the title’s warning part of the cover itself.
The main track sequence ended with “Arise.” Sturm identified it as the song that best expressed what she hoped listeners would take away: encouragement to pursue a purpose they might not yet recognize.
Before release, Flyleaf previewed the material at listening events chosen through fan voting, pairing recorded tracks with acoustic performances. Memento Mori entered the Billboard 200 at No. 8, with 56,400 copies sold in its first week, according to Nielsen SoundScan figures reported by HM Magazine.
