Album: Evanescence

Few artists have experienced quite as vertiginous a breakthrough as the Arkansas prog-metallers Evanescence, who went from having their debut Origin all but ignored to selling 14 million copies of the 2003 follow-up Fallen. Apart from anything else, this shows that Goth is still going strong; this third album is wreathed in the genre staples of black-clad, mascara'd gloom, a mood best captured on "Lithium", where singer Amy Lee claims, "I want to stay in love with my sorrow/ Oh, but God I want to let it go". The hyperbolic imagery ("I dream in darkness/ I sleep to die", etc) reaches its peak in "Like You", where she yearns to be "cold in the ground like you", her fluting voice surrounded by heavy riffing guitars like the security goons around a minor celeb - which, coincidentally, is exactly the impression given by the band photos. But her narrow vocal range is mirrored in the restricted breadth of the band's musical and emotional range, which never strays outside the short distance from paranoid to apocalyptic, concerns addressed in as bombastic and tune-dodging a manner as possible.

DOWNLOAD THIS: 'Lithium', 'Lacrymosa'