Review: All Music

3 1/2 out of 5 stars

Difficult births are no stranger to Evanescence. Nothing ever quite seems to come easy for Amy Lee, yet the five years separating Evanescence’s 2006 sophomore effort The Open Door and its eponymous 2011 album were relatively quiet, the band undergoing some lineup changes -- not to mention a switch of producers, from Steve Lillywhite to Nick Raskulinecz -- but nothing comparable to the messy departure of Ben Moody between the group’s first two albums. Such comparative calm is reflected within the grooves of Evanescence, which is less tortured tonally even if it remains quite dramatic. Lee’s default mode is to sing to the rafters, her operatic bluster sometimes overbearing when her settings are gloomy, but Raskulinecz pulls off a nifty trick of brightening the murk, retaining all of the churning drama but lessening the oppression by brightening the colors and pushing the melody. While there’s hardly a danger of Amy Lee removing her thick mascara, she’s not pouting all the time; there’s some shade and light here, some variety of tempos, enough to give Evanescence the illusion of warmth, not to mention a fair share of crossover hooks. It’s aural candy for aging goths and tortured tweens alike.

Source: allmusic.com

Evanescence album promising but lacks depth

Evanescence makes a strong comeback with their new self-titled album, surprising fans with a more upbeat attitude.

"What you Want," is a perfect showcase of the fun and catchy made-for-radio sound that can be heard throughout the album. Though it is unusual for a band like Evanescence to sound so sunny, they successfully capture the mood without sounding unnatural or betray­ing the expectations of their fan base.
While this lighthearted attitude is enjoy­able, the album fails to capture the wide range of emotions expressed in their previous album, "The Open Door" and, instead is so intent on keeping it upbeat,that the band loses itself. It can even be said that the album is a little too cheerful at times—there are a few songs that are entirely forgettable due to their lack of passion.

The one song that should be the most pas­sionate falls flat. "My Heart is Broken," with its cliché title lyrics, completely misses the mark despite starting in the right direction. For a song that should convey deep emotional pain, it is not nearly melancholy enough. "Erase This" is equally forgettable, but for different reasons, such as being too fast-paced and too passionless to draw interest.

Though there are a few songs that fail to please, the album, as a whole, is a de­light to listen to. Fans will fall in love with "Lost in Paradise," "The Change," "Never Go Back" and "Made of Stone." "Sick" pro­vides a nice respite from the fun with its edgy, angry sound and the contrast of the hopeful and the macabre in "The Other Side" is a breath of fresh air.

"Swimming Home" is perhaps the most captivating song on the entire album. Curious in its striking difference from the other songs, it can only be described as unique. Though the vocals are unde­niably lead singer Amy Lee's, the lyrics are so strange and the sound is so eerily alien that it demands attention and defies comparison. The creepy atmosphere that it creates is so impressive that it cannot be missed.
"Evanescence" was released on Tuesday and is available in stores and on iTunes.

Source: thesetonian.com

Review: IGN

Five years since the release of their sophomore album, Arkansas rockers Evanescence finally return with their third effort. A hiatus and scrapped sessions with producer Steve Lillywhite behind them, the quintet brought in Nick Raskulinecz (Foo Fighters, Deftones) to handle production duties. The result is an album that delivers on the orchestral-laced hard rock thrust and Amy Lee's soaring vocals fans have come to expect, with a few surprising experiments along the way.

Lee's skyward vocals suit the album's obsession with the emotional frustration and devastation of a break-up well, ripe with romantically longing tunes like gorgeous power ballad "Lost In Paradise", where her breathy vocals in the beginning awaken as she passionately apologizes for not sticking with the guy who believed in her. While there are moments of beauty, like the twinkling piano and classical strings wrestling with burly riffs on "The Change", there are plenty of tracks where the guitar assault does its best to smother the strings for a more direct hard rock sound, as with the thick slab of metal-kissed guitar shoving the orchestra to the background on "End Of The Dream".

Lee's alluring vocals hang over the rubbery thicket of guitars on "Made Of Stone", almost as if she is haunting the song. Their attempt to pretty up "Never Go Back" nearly derails the track, with guitar gnawing over a grumbling bass groove sounding great before they clumsily toss in a bit of unnecessary piano in the hook of what is otherwise an invigorating listen, as Lee desperately professes her love. For all the familiar cascading piano and grubby march of guitar and stomping drums on fiery "My Heart Is Broken", where Lee's siren-esque vocals shine, the band takes a few interesting chances late in the album.

A hazy synth hum and stuttering beat make for a head turning sonic shift on the excellent "Oceans", with plenty of guitar in the hook to make up for the neon fog in the verses. The icy chill of electo-pop ballad "Swimming Home" is a twitchy, sleepy experiment gone awry, and is enough of a sonic departure to be better served as a bonus track or b-side. The slamming beat and odd blend of twinkling piano and electro-pop dance elements toil with thrashing guitars for a cluttered, but uplifting listen as Lee pleads for freedom of expression on the oddly poppy vocal of "What You Want".

With a few tracks spreading their wings a bit and plenty of surefire fan favorites, like the dramatic roaring vocals and guitars sawing through piano on tense "Erase This", Evanescence's latest is great album that delivers the familiar while keeping an eye on the future.

8 out of 10

Source: ign.com

Review: Los Angeles

Album review: Evanescence's 'Evanescence'

“Hello, remember me?” Amy Lee asks at the top of the first Evanescence album since 2006, and given all that’s happened in pop over the last five years, you can understand her uncertainty. (Lady Gaga’s rock ’n’ roll makeover at the Video Music Awards can’t have helped.) Yet if Lee is a smaller star now than she was during the chart-scaling days of “Bring Me to Life” and “My Immortal,” she hasn’t lost her faith in goth-metal melodrama. This self-titled effort is instantly recognizable as an Evanescence album, with the churning guitars, minor-key strings and densely layered vocals Lee was using before the Euro-house beat colonized American radio.

The result delivers plenty of pain-soaked pleasure: “What You Want” rides its central riff with a bulldozer’s efficiency, while closer “Swimming Home” finds room in Lee’s gloom for a harp. (Scour the album’s liner notes for the identity of her “harp technician.”) And it’s a kick, as always, to hear Lee flex her sense of ice-queen sarcasm in “Made of Stone,” where she tells some hapless doofus, “Speak your mind, like I care.” But “Evanescence” can also feel a little battened-down, as though its steadfast familiarity were an act of resistance against the dance-pop Barbies at the gate. A livelier album seems to lurk inside this one, struggling to sneak past its creator.

Evanescence
“Evanescence”
(Wind-up)
Two and a half stars (Out of four)

— Mikael Wood

Review: Loudwire

Evanescence, ‘Evanescence’ – Album Review

“Hello, hello, remember me? / I’m everything you can’t control.” From the very first chorus off ‘What You Want,’ the lead single from Evanescence’s new self-titled release, the tone is set.

There are very few women in the rock genre that can compete with the soaring, angelic, powerhouse of vocals that are Amy Lee, but she’s more than just a singer; you’ve got to dig pretty deep to discover all that Lee has to offer. Along with her ever-changing band, she’s crafted some of the most dynamic rock tunes of the past 10 years.

Her lyrical content dissects the fine line between love and hate, gut-wrenching longing, and true despair and combines them with crunchy guitars, ethereal orchestral accents, and of course, her alluring piano tones. The songs Evanescence deliver are undeniably their own, and a sound and style that their fans have come to hunger for.

The new disc, ‘Evanescence,’ delivers on all of the aforementioned, and while Lee and company explore some new elements, the sound is signature Evanescence through and through. Lee has perfected the art of meticulously building a song brick by harmonious brick from start to finish, adding textures, tone and emotion and letting it flourish throughout. In the end, each song has been spun into a true work of art.

With ‘The Change,’ the vocals start off soft and sweet and as the band builds the melody behind her like master musical craftsmen. The vocals amplify, as well, just in time to take them back to basics during the chorus. It’s that versatility that makes Lee so good at what she does.

‘My Heart is Broken’ starts out with Amy Lee spinning a haunting intro on piano, right before her vocals kick in and soften up the sound, “I will wander ’til the end of time, torn away from you.” In a peculiar way, It’s within this despair where Lee finds her strengths. Then the song kicks in with the rest of the band but continues to be driven by the piano, a place where Lee seems to feel most at home. The juxtaposition between the sweet, rapturous, piano hitting a brick wall of crunchy guitars and driving drums ironically seems to make perfect sense in the overall construction of the song.

‘Erase This’ is another up-tempo rocker in the vein of ‘What You Want,’ both anthemic tunes that will undoubtedly find their best fit on a live stage where the band can truly unleash the power that feels a bit under wraps when coming through earphones. Not to say that these songs are weak by any stretch of the imagination, they’re just primed and ready for a live setting.

‘Lost in Paradise’ is one of those songs where if you shut your eyes, you’ll be transported to another place and time, if there were such a thing as a rock ‘n’ roll lullaby, this would be it. Lush vocals accompanied by a beautiful arrangement of strings, is that a harp we hear Miss Lee? (We heard she learned to play harp in her down time!) Amy’s stark vulnerability is at the forefront of this tune and her ability to pull the listener into her songs is an undeniable force that few have truly mastered yet Lee seems to do with ease.

Songs like ‘Sick,’ End of the Dream,’ and ‘Never Go Back’ are where the band behind Miss Lee really gets to show off their chops through skyrocketing soundscapes. Chugging guitar riffs, bombastic bass lines, and the thumping drums carve out the path for Lee’s vocals to traverse and it truly feels like the music is taking the lead and her iconic voice is simply following the path less followed, as only Amy Lee (and perhaps Robert Frost) would do.

‘Swimming Home’ is probably about as close to a straight up pop song that Evanescence is going to get. There’s an anticipation for the band to kick it up a notch on this track but that never happens, leaving more room for Lee’s lush vocals to fill the void. The smooth choruses projected the heavenly feeling of jumping from one billowing cloud to another, surrounded by only the warm glow of Lee’s voice.

Evanescence have the innate ability to deliver songs that leave even the humblest of listeners thinking the song was penned just for us. These shared emotions throughout the songs remind us of how we’re all connected, even if in the smallest of ways, and sometimes it’s that simple connection that we’ve been searching for the most.

Critics will continue to struggle with what to call Evanescence’s overall sound, and that’s part of the beauty of the band. As hard as people try to paint them into a corner, they refuse to stay in one place. The baroque baroness of rock and her loyal following don’t need to slap a label on Evanescence; they just let the music do the talking. Evanescence fans waited a long time for this one, and we think it was well worth the wait.

Source: loudwire.com

Review: USA Today

Evanescence, Evanescence

* * ½ (out of four) GOTH ROCK
The band's self-titled third album, its first since 2006's The Open Door, boils down to a tug of war between sole original member Amy Lee and producer Nick Raskulinecz (Foo Fighters, Alice in Chains, Rush), who stepped in after initial sessions with Steve Lillywhite.
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It's regrettable that Raskulinecz didn't have more pull. On the 12-track disc, recorded in Nashville, he dials back the leaden melodrama, lightens the gloom and sweeps away some of the thick gothic fog to better sharpen melodies.
He should have muzzled Lee on a few occasions. An impressive singer when she minds the brakes, Lee too often lapses into histrionics and indulgent squalling, hijacking songs to near parody.
Tempered, her emotional wail enhances the hypnotic medieval magic of signature Evanescence tunes. Some electronics slip into the mix, but the band's rock essence and penchant for weepy strings remain prominent, as does its flair for conveying wretched despair.
>Download:Sick, Erase This, What You Want, Lost in Paradise
Source: usatoday.com

Review: Rolling Stone

2 1/2 stars

Allow Amy Lee to reintroduce herself: "Remember me? I'm everything you can't control," the singer coos on "What You Want," the pummeling but pretty first single off Evanscence's third album and first in five years. Ever since Lee and Ben Moody, the furry-chinned guy who co-wrote the band’s chart-topping first disc, publicly broke from the Christian-rock scene that helped launch them, Lee has gone her own way. She remains one of hard rock’s leading ladies. But here, the sometimes syrupy mix of piano, guitar and strings feels more like a formula than a genuine catharsis, especially because there’s nothing as saucy as the last album's hit, "Call Me When You’re Sober."
By Nick Catucci
Source: rollingstone.com

Review: Reuters

If you need a textbook example of how a band can take a successful signature sound and run it into the ground, Evanescence’s third album is here to provide a case study in repetitive stress for your Ruts 101 class.

Even the album’s title, “Evanescence,” and its corporate-logo cover testify to how many chances the once-promising group is willing to take after five years away, which is to say, zilch.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way, since auteur Amy Lee kept promising how different the third album would be. Three years ago, she told the press she was writing Celtic-flavored songs. As recently as early 2010, the band was in the studio with producer Steve Lillywhite, working on an electronics-heavy project Lee swore would reflect her interest in hip, programming-driven bands like MGMT.

But, apparently, she had some sense knocked into her about that whole “adventurous” thing. The plug was pulled on those Lillywhite sessions and Lee re-started the album from scratch with new producer Nick Raskulinecz (Foo Fighters), now aiming to adhere as close to previously useful formulas as humanly possible. The resulting collection could just as easily -- and blandly -- be titled “The Open Door II” or “Fallen III.”

Evanescence became an instant breakout in 2003 by brilliantly answering the theretofore unasked musical question: What would it sound like if Sarah McLachlan fronted Black Sabbath? As a solo belter, she might have sounded too pretty for her own good, and the band members' metallic crunch might have been a bore, unaided ... but together, they were the peanut butter cup of rock & roll.

But eight years and the departure of all the other original band members later, Lee’s gothic angst feels like a teenaged shtick the talented frontwoman is too nervous to give up. Nearly every song will begin with the same brand of muted-Metallica guitar chugging and thunderous drums, and every anxious verse of Lee's will resolve in the same kind of anthemic, depressively soaring minor-key chorus.

Perhaps an unfortunate template was established way back when the group’s first hit, “Bring Me to Life,” got picked up for the “Daredevil” soundtrack, because virtually every interchangeable tune on the new album also sounds designed to play over the end credits of an action blockbuster that takes itself too seriously.

Lee got married in 2007, so you might expect the slightest hint of tranquility to have set in since the last album -- yet the love apocalypse remains at hand, as ever. “I will never find a way to heal my soul, and I will wander ‘til the end of time, torn away from you,” she wails in the bluntly titled “My Heart Is Broken.”

The best track, “Never Go Back,” benefits from some odd and genuinely surprising chord changes. Even there, the melodrama borders on self-parody, with Lee breathlessly and deathlessly declaring, “I die every time I close my eyes—you’re always there.” In another stratospherically gloomy number, “End of the Dream,” she brushes off a tombstone while looking into the soul of “a bird closing her eyes one last time … I wonder if she dreamed like me.” “The Other Side” imagines making up with an estranged lover beyond the grave.

Guess she’s not overly concerned about shedding that whole goth image.

Only in the closing “Swimming Home” do we get a tantalizing glimpse of what that abandoned album with Lillywhite might’ve sounded like. Over a subdued electronic pulse, Lee sings plaintively about being in love but being called away to the sky to rejoin “my kind.” Yes, it sounds tailor-made for a movie about an alien who makes the mistake of falling in love with a human, but surely that’s how some folks – rock stars or otherwise – really feel in their relationships.

The lyrics aren’t all as hoary as the ones cited above. When she’s not pondering the wuthering heights of doom, Lee does come up with a few interestingly brutal couplets about being a liar and loser in a relationship. Maybe Lee is suffering through one of the most tumultuous marriages this side of “Virginia Woolf,” or perhaps she’s still drawing emotional fuel from her feud with the disgruntled former band members who reassembled as We Are the Fallen.

Or maybe she’s just writing to order, figuring Evanescence fans expect nothing less than complete torment. If so, it’s a shame someone who still has the potential to be one of our great contemporary female rock stars has buried her light under the bushel of branding.

Meanwhile, if you want to hear the best Evanescence song of the decade, go pick up Taylor Swift’s “Haunted,” an Amy Lee homage that outdoes Amy Lee without repeating itself for 47 minutes.

Source:

Review: JAM! Showbiz

Evanescence

The more things change, the more they stay the same for Amy Lee. Evanescence’s leader introduces another new lineup — and flirts with electronics occasionally — on this third CD. But the basic formula hasn’t changed: She wails about love and death over a dramatic goth- metal amalgam of craggy guitars, moody keyboards and sweeping orchestrations. Assuming you still care.

Download: What You Want; The Change

RATING: 3 (out of 5)

Source: jam.canoe.ca

Review: Artist Direct

Evanescence truly come to life on their self-titled third full-length album.

There's a pronounced vitality surging through these twelve songs, rising from the band's willingness to go out on a musical limb. Certainly, hallmarks of the Evanescence sound remain intact—swirling synths, anthemic choruses, and heavy riffs—but the quintet never plays it safe, and that's why Evanescence remains their best album to date and a new classic.

A classic orchestral hum ignites "The Change" as frontwoman Amy Lee declares the end of a love she can't bear to quit announcing, "Say you love me, but it's not enough".

Lee opens up more than ever before as she seamlessly segues from symphonic hypnosis on the verses to stadium-filling choruses. There's a theatrical undercurrent flowing beneath Lee's words that ebbs and flows with Terry Balsamo's entrancing guitar and Tim McCord's bass chug. The keyboards entwine with the vocals for pure rock gold.

On "My Heart Is Broken", a gorgeous piano intro rises alongside Lee's vibrant vocal delivery as Will Hunt's airtight drumming propels the tune into another realm. Balsamo and Troy McLawhorn's tandem six-string attack builds in unison during a swirling exercise in ethereal heaviness on "The Other Side". The record's centerpiece is the elegantly dark ballad, "Lost in Paradise". It's in "Paradise" that Lee's genius floats to the forefront most prominently. She paints a poignant picture of yearning for redemption from heartache crooning, "We've been falling for all this time and now I'm lost in paradise."

Meanwhile, "Sick" exists on the opposite end of the spectrum. It's a fire starter of a track sharpened with a chaotic metallic edge by Balsamo's bruising. Lee also schizophrenically harmonizes with a raw passion that's impossible not to feel. It's like Korn by way of Depeche Mode.Everything culminates during "Swimming Home". Electronic production cascades into Lee's impenetrable delivery, oscillating between soaring and sensitive. She channels Portishead with an operatic bravado befitting of a timeless film score. It's an incredible closing moment for Lee and Co.

Evanescence represent modern rock at its finest, and this album is further proof. They manage to experiment while staying unshakably infectious. That's not an easy feat, and few acts manage to do that. Evanescence is spacey, soaring, strong, and utterly alive. 5 out of 5 stars

Source: artistdirect.com

Review: Entertainment Weekly

Goth goddess Amy Lee has to not only deal with constant turnover — she is now the band's sole original member — but also shoulder the burden of being a woman in hard rock's sea of Y chromosomes. On Evanescence, the band's first album in five years, she still occasionally lapses into drama-club caterwauling, but when she uses baroque orchestral accoutrements to wage an air assault on her demons (as she does on the blistering ''Oceans''), she's more than just the token girl in the pit. B

Source: Entertainment Weekly

NME First Listen: "Evanescence"

It's been eight whole years since Evanescence shot to the top of the UK singles chart with their debut cut 'Bring Me To Life' and five years since they last released a studio album. Given the pseudo nu metal tendencies of that debut smash, the operatic leanings of singer Amy Lee's voice and their brief dabble in the bonkers, yet extremely profitable world of Christian rock, they've been billed as proponents of just about every genre over the years.

Now back with their self-titled third record, in spite of the fact that pretty much the band's whole line-up, bar Lee, has been dispensed with and replaced over the years, it's pretty much business as you were, musically speaking.

'What You Want'
You'll have heard this one. A big thumping drumbeat and driving guitar riff kick things off, before giving way to a stomping chorus written with NFL stadiums in mind. They're back alright.

'Made Of Stone'
Probably the heaviest track on the record, with a riff that could have been taken straight from 'Ride The Lightning'. It features Amy Lee being confrontational on a former flame and being 'all out of love'. This is the Arkansas rockers at their spikiest.

'The Change'
Built around a grinding riff, a super operatic vocal line from Amy Lee and a ridiculously catchy chorus, this is one of the album's poppier moments.

'My Heart Is Broken'
This one sounds quite a lot like a Disney ballad, beginning with Amy Lee cooing "I will wander until the end of time" over a piano line straight off Powers Ballad Vol.12. It gets heavier at the end though, don't worry.

'The Other Side'
Kicking off with a sludgy, almost Meshuggah esque riff, this is one of the record's gloomiest moments, with Lee seeming to reach out to someone beyond the grave in the chorus.

'Erase This'
Things get really intense here, with a swirling set of strings and Lee singing about being caught in a flood. It gets very metal in the outro too, with a riff that Kerry King would be proud of thundering over the last 30 seconds.

'Lost In Paradise'
Another piano ballad, but more much stripped back than 'My Heart Is Broken'. Quite reminiscent of 'My Immortal' from the band's debut 'Fallen' before it was re-recorded with that massive guitar breakdown.

'Sick'
After the ballad comes the backlash, with Lee spitting persistently snarling "I'm sick of it all" over a Soundgarden inspired guitar wall.

'End Of The Dream'
Another heavy one, which is built around a muscular riff, a menancing low slung bassline and a big soaring chorus. No quiet fade out yet.

'Oceans'
The record's most brooding moment, with Lee gently singing over a latter day Nine Inch Nails style synth. A big ass riff kicks in when the chorus comes around though.

'Never Go Back'
Now we're back to heavy again and a major upping of the tempo. A blistering track, that sounds like something Iron Maiden might have recorded if Bruce Dickinson called in sick and they drafted in Sarah Cracknell for the day.

'Swimming Home'
The album's swansong is a slow fade out, with Lee's vocals draped over a minimal backdrop of electronica. She spends the whole song apologizing too, which seems like a bizarre way to send off an album.

Verdict
It's pretty good and surprisingly heavy. The riffs rock pretty hard and Amy Lee has kept her tendency toward big ballads down to two. It won't win anybody over who wasn't keen on the band's early stuff. But it'll certainly satisfy rabid fanbase who've had to make do with Nightwish for the last five years.

By Tom Goodwyn

Source: nme.com

Review: Spin

5/10

The one thing people tell you about Evanescence, if you ask, is that they have a good singer. Amy Lee can hang out indefinitely in a place most of her peers can't reach: a ragged, intense peak of expressed turmoil, where frequencies rise and pain swells into bliss. You might expect that the problem with Evanescence's third album of epic goth theater is that Lee's band hold her back. Instead, it's that they don't hold her back enough; she hops to that intense peak the second a song allows, and often doesn't return. Imagine if fireworks didn't burst or fade, but just hung there like frozen flowers.

Lee coos verses and belts choruses, while her band -- which changed lineups after 2003's smash debut, Fallen, and changed again before this album -- spice the grinding guitars and weeping piano with feints at electro-pop ("Swimming Home"). When the arrangements provide a path for Lee to follow, all that dark melodrama becomes moving, even fun -- in "Sick," the loose, lazy melody gradually tightens into a chanted chorus, and on the solid single "What You Want," Lee's voice spirals downward on the word "down." But too much of the time, Evanescence get lost in the cavernous spaces carved out by their unsecret weapon.

By Theon Weber

Source: spin