When you are lucky enough to be featured on the original soundtrack of a Hollywood blockbuster such as Daredevil, especially when you haven’t released any albums before, then chances are that your career will take off all of a sudden. It’s surprising that this album reached position 7 on the US Billboard charts. Despite all that, it seems as though the US audience is not corrupted at all. It must excite a lot of independent labels such as Century Media and Nuclear Blast that such a band is capable of doing so because those two labels have such equivalent bands within their artists, and I wouldn’t be surprised all to see them investing in the US for one of their bands.

Evanescence has indeed a lot in common with Lacuna Coil or Flowing Tears for instance. In fact, the first time I listened to the bands I thought I was listening to Christina Scabbia or Stefanie Duchêne. I just couldn’t believe I was not listening to either of them, and that I was listening to a US band. I have listened to other female fronted US bands, (Tapping The Vein, Aghora, Alas), but none of them are even close to Evanescence. For the first single, the band chose Bring Me To Life (featured on the Daredevil Soundtrack) along with My Immortal) which is indeed a great choice with its rap-rock nu-metal riffs and typical nu-metal male vocals sung by Paul McCoy of 12 Stones and that’s probably why it’s beginning to be so popular in the US, but the rest of the album completely backs that song up. In fact, I really can agree when one says that Amy Lee has a voice that could make any song sound good. Her vocals are mesmerizing and just pull you in and won’t let you go. It only gets better when she is accompanied by the background choir of the Millenium Choir of Los Angeles (Everybody’s Fool, Haunted, Imaginary and Whisper). Her vocals take another dimension when she plays it alone with the piano (My Immortal). The songs are either dark and very atmospheric, beautifully textured with keyboards, strings and layered back up vocals, or on the other hand very edgy and crunchy, but either driving the music to new levels. The tone of the disc as a whole, is definitely haunting and ethereal and it just keeps getting better with every listen and it's an album with a consistent quality that is damn compelling. The production is thicker, warmer and fuller than almost everything I have heard so far. This is definitely more than just a solid entry for a new comer.

I have been reading reviews of this album at different US locations to see how American people are ignorant in terms of heavy metal, and it’s true very few of them mentioned Lacuna Coil or even Flowing Tears as references or comparisons. What I read is that Evanescence’s music is a cross between nu-metal such as Linkin’ Park meeting female vocalists such as Sarah McLachlan. Come on, I mean I wish I had the time to respond to all those ignorant individuals and tell them about our European acts that were there before this band. This situation should make me hate Evanescence , but when a band releases such a amazingly great album, there’s no chance you don’t, you just fall in love with their music.

I ordered this thing from Amazon.com because I had to have it. This is the epitomy of the music I will forever adore and will enjoy this disc for years to come. I just can’t believe this thing had me put away the latest effort from The Gathering. I wish I could have written this review in my mother language to tell you how much I love this album... I can't wait April 14 to listen to the non-album tracks Farther Away and Missing featured on the Bring Me To Life single.