It’s going to be nearly 15 years since the release of goth rock/metal band Evanescence’s breakthrough album Fallen , one that featured some of their biggest hits like ‘Bring Me To Life’ and ‘My Immortal’. And about six years since their self-titled 2011 album, there’s a new life breathed into the once-radio rock rulers, led by the melancholy queen Amy Lee.
Synthesis 16 tracks that soar, break into sombre starkness and – as the title suggests – sees the band get into a confluent space, using string sections, electronic beats and the occasional pop melody. Structurally, songs like ‘Never Go Back’ and ‘My Heart is Broken’ are intensely familiar, featuring harmonies that gave Lee and Evanescence chart-scorching success, almost transformed into a epic-scale production.
Meanwhile, the pulsing ‘Lacrymosa’ interplays a sharp string section with a dark beat. It’s probably something that Lee wanted to do for a long time, re-imagining these heavily polished rock tunes as something more stirring. It’s a bit self-indulgent to endeavour that her vocals are the source of that evocativeness, but Lee pretty much delivers even on a too-familiar hit like ‘The End of the Dream’.
She skips all the Paul McCoy anger on their famous ‘Bring Me to Life’, and it sounds expectedly magnificent. ‘Imaginary’ gets a bit of that dubstep wobble, while ‘Secret Door’ is essentially nocturnal, perhaps a cue that Lee took from her recent stint making a “family” album called Dream Too Much . There’s more solid recreation on ‘Lithium’ and ‘My Immortal’, probably a starting point for most listeners who dug Lee’s vocal range and her soft piano flourishes. The only new song, ‘Imperfection’, perhaps hints about the group’s new direction, which is entirely minus noticeable guitar riffs but probably acceptable to most diehards.
It’s almost a heavily cinematic redoing of a lot of Evanescence’s best songs, but it still works for longtime fans, not just as a novelty. Some of these songs being reinterpreted means that they can still hold their own, which is more than good news for a band that time has often forgotten.
