Far From Heaven inwardly examines a wavering of Amy’s beliefs, indirectly touching on the loss of her brother Robbie in 2018. It’s a haunting, huge piano ballad in which Amy’s voice, though laden with heavy emotion, defiantly soars. The heavy Better Without You, meanwhile, is a cleaning of house that, in its chorus, sounds not unlike Adele’s Skyfall theme with massive guitars behind it. It’s a similar case for Feeding The Dark. But if these moments seem like familiar territory for Evanescence, where it takes its identity is in the feeling of climbing back up again after taking the knocks. Learning from, rather than drowning in, life’s gristle. That and the ever-expanding musical palette, still rooted in the vaguely gothy metal of old, but now with the heaviness taken further, and punctuated with electronics and keyboards that aren't so far from Bring Me The Horizon at their most epic.
But it’s in Use My Voice that the change of perspective is most obvious. As Amy explained at the time of its release last year, as the Presidential race got really nasty and the Black Lives Matter movement found itself facing a wall of ignorance as much as it blossomed support, though not directly influenced by these events in its writing, it also speaks of realising that speaking up and being part of the solution is sometimes as important as offering reflection and comfort. In breaking her own fourth wall and showing her hand in this way, it’s an empowering, defiant statement. That this often enigmatic artist has felt it necessary to go down such a path at all only underlines the song’s point, and The Bitter Truth as a whole.