Evanescence - Synthesis

Being comprised almost entirely of symphonically and electronically reworked older material from previous albums, Synthesis’ qualification as a fully fledged studio album is arguable, but it did make it one of the easier Evanescence albums to listen through for a write-up. Having not listened to her music for awhile, I was pleasantly reminded of how majestic Amy Lee’s singing is. Much of what was kind of cheesy about the gothic alternative metal of the previous Evanescence albums has been replaced (though not some of the infamous lyrics) with big, booming orchestral movements, rendering away much of this album’s classification within the metal genre. The album does show Amy Lee’s voice to be much better fitting in front of a more exclusively symphonic backdrop, but with this musical falling into place came the completely avoidable pitfall of cheap, unoriginal electronic flair peppering the songs. The re-worked version of “Bring Me to Life” is a prime example of the negligible effects of stylistic change of the album on the songs’ quality. Originally terrible, its polishing with a huge string section and the awkward absence of vocals where the male vocals once resided did noting to fix it; it’s still terrible. The exclusively symphonic reupholstering of “Lithium” and the tasteful string re-arrangement of the classic emo teenager ballad “My Immortal” (not a dig at emo kids, we all at least held our heads in somber when we first heard that song) provide a faint light into what ascension could have been made from this album without the unnecessary, gaudy electronic bedazzling.

The original song “Hi-Lo” adds little to the album, suffering from the same electronic littering; compositionally unexciting, it drags on like crazy too with its excessive repetition of musical ideas. “Imperfection” closes the album a little bit more confidently, bombastic as the most bombastic moments before it, its doused in wubbly, bassy electronics, which are overdone as all hell, but a greater portion of what’s there is well-tailored to the obviously intentionally overly dramatic song.

I really think this project could have turned out much more convincing of its necessity if it had gone more riskily into these reworkings with just the orchestra to back Amy up rather than relying on the weighty electronic production to bolster the dynamics of these songs. A lot of bands try out this approach on some bonus tracks with the orchestral versions of songs often sounding simply skeletal and unfitting of the composition being mimicked, but Amy Lee has shown that she can sound excellent in the middle of a concert hall with dozens of acoustically amplified strings behind her, and I think with a greater focus on orchestral arranging, this project would have come out a lot better. As it is though, it’s hard to be more than indifferent to it.