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.