First of all, hello. I am French so please excuse my scholar (and not perfect) English
I opened a similar topic on
the French "gothic" forum of SoM and I wanted you English speakers to know it (because an American changed the style of the band a few hours ago so...). Don't worry, I am going to translate what have been said
In fact I don't want us to talk about what we think about the band, but to discuss its musical style that often change from symphonic to gothic and gothic to symphonic. To my opinion,
Evanescence plays
Symphonic Metal like
Within Temptation - which used to be gothic-doom metal.
Now let me give my own arguments (before I translate the answers of the French participants) and if you don't agree me, do not hesitate to get involved - but with arguments please
**********************
(For the moment I just know "Fallen" from the band, which is the most famous from them)
So, only about the music, for me the band is absolutly not
Gothic Metal because :
> there is no crossed or dual riff (which is an obvious lack of melodic concerning the guitars - gothic is
one of the most melodic of metal styles)
> too much built around the vocals (especially Amy Lynn Lee's) which let the instrumental parts of the band in the foreground, moreover the orchestra and the chorus are emphasized compared to the guitars - which is one of the most obvious characteristics of
Symphonic Metal (logic, isn't it ?
)
> acoustics are too "clean", and I said
in another forum (nobody disagreed, then I think I wasn't wrong) that the majority of
Gothic Metal bands use a special acoustics : there is often a feeling of echoes, as if the album had been recorded in a church.
> to finish with, it is too grandiloquent and often epic (another
Symphonic Metal characteristic) like on 'Whisper', and sometimes it sounds neometal, so much that a friend of mine was convinced that
Linkin Park made the songwriting of 'Bring Me To Life'.
I must remind you that symphonic bands often play balads with only piano and the female-front singer's vocals (there are two piano balads on "Fallen") that gothic bands (like
Tristania,
Theatre Of Tragedy,
Trail Of Tears :
NoNe have made any balad at the time they were still gothic bands)
... and it doesn't bother me when I see that "Fallen" is often quoted on the topic "what gothic album are you listening to now" because you are right, the aestheticism of "Fallen" is what I call the American gothic, which is witchcraft/suicide/supernatural and all the stereotyped stuff, and in the topic it is not said "gothic metal album" so... 
