I have been a fan of evanescence since middle school and I will be describing a bunch of thoughts on their new album.
–This actually may be my favorite album ever released in the 2020s. One of my favorites of evanescence, though that is so hard to pick. Of course the open door and fallen are the best for its classic, their newer albums before this are also good, and this one is just incorporating everything from their old and new stuff and that was very successful here.
–This one had it very very hard to rank the songs, they are all the same tier. The other songs also lifted to the exact same standards of the two early released ones.
–Your girl has not aged and her notes have not changed.
–There are some new incorporations I found as apparently she worked with people from previous 2000s bands that were never with them. Some of my favorite instrumentals are on this album, especially the ones in Wide Open Heart and Afterlife. Just levitating.
–WWYF was the first song I listened to and I related to it so much I needed dat.
–I love all the bridges in these songs, like the one in Sanctuary, Afterlife, Beautiful Lie, and Calm Down are just the best parts.
-middle school me, who listened to gacha music that was a mix of evanescence, halsey, bea miller, melanie, marina, bring me the horizon, and ava max, would absolutely love this album, in the best way. My taste now also likes it, and we found something that may unite my pre trauma stuff, is that going to heal all of that from that time. Unite the means and ends. Rahh.
–As a fan of all of her music, I saw some very close parallels between these songs and her old songs, in such a good way. Beautiful Lie sounded just like Made of Stone (one of my fav songs on that one middle album). TMWYHE may be a reference to CMWYS with a way more political meaning here. Who will you follow does kinda reference Everybody’s Fool a bit with the theme and tone. Rapture is kinda like Going Under for a bit, Sanctuary is kinda like Whisper. How do I heal sounds exactly like My Immortal, and Calm Down is like Lose Control. Wide Open Heart was definitely referencing “Weight of the World”, also one of my favorite absolutely underrated songs from The Open Door. Forever Without You references a bunch of songs and albums as well.
–This does reflect the variety and mix of sounds she used that I absolutely love here. Some sounded just like her old stuff, some sounded just like her new stuff.
–I have been a gacha kid for my childhood (ironically where evanescence was found too), so that means I would be inclined to be a Halsey fan for that time, and I was, which means I am very familiar with the song Castle. That song is so so similar to the new song About Us on this album. Of course not trying to sue everyone, they are just so similar and that is very fascinating for structure. I have not listened to the former song in actual ages but when I listened to it I kinda felt the nostalgia stuff, then listened to both and it clicked like that.
–To be the theater kid, why is Forever Without You glinda and elphaba, I had to say it I am very sorry to all Wicked and Evanescence fans, idk I guess I have to apologize now.
–This album is actually very political when you look it up and listen to it many times. Outside of this, I listen to some 80s new age/goth, 70s progressive rock, and 90s hard rock/metal so those genres tend to get political, and her music is different from those but has some of the very same themes that are newer to her other albums. But when listening to it first I got political vibes from some of the songs but didn’t think it was such a pressing thing, it definitely is. Which, YES? Take my girl away from the posers and larps.
–She wanted it to be very aware of how the world shapes the narratives within these systems, which is what we would call “cultural hegemony”. That is in a lot of the themes here.
–A lot of songs were confirmed to be about king stefan the orange, capitalism, as well as the police apparatus and ICE. There were obviously many references to state violence, capitalist exploitation, and the need to build up strength within this realm.
–A lot of it is also about community within the stuff, which I find very important when building the small r revolutions since the only things saving us are the big ones that cannot be done without builds. Top down structures aren’t giving us nothing here.
–Its like, how much of this Epstein class shit are we going to take before we either reach a bifiguration point to their technofascism or our bottom up ecosocialism, which is what she is confronting and what I would scale up. Hell yes, workers of the world unite.
