I dunno if you guys knew about this, but apparently in the early stages of the writing process of this album, Amy Lee wanted to do something completely different, and wrote a lot of electronic & dance songs. But the producers hated it and made her rewrite the entire album again with a 'safer' more traditional evanescenes sound (heard in WYW). I dunno How much of this is true, and I'm not exactly sure how I feel about this. But I know at least I don't think the self-titled will be as different as I originally hoped it be.
That is false, it is true that they were working with Steve Lillywhite and were originally going to be in a far more experimental/electronic sound (i.e. Portishead), but it wasn't working out for them and they didn't like the way the songs were sounding. The only song from that writing session that made it to the album was "Swimming Home". Amy actually says what happened in the first post (read quote): http://www.lpassociation.com/forums/showthread.php?t=33874&p=1048916&viewfull=1#post1048916.
It's a pretty good album but certainly their weakest. The band have been in freefall since Fallen (no pun intended) which, although painfully commercial-sounding, was by far their best album. They just feel like a standard female-fronted rock band now.
Oh my bad, i forgot about that early post! But if they didn't like what they where hearing fair enough. I was just worried this would have been like "meteora", the label requesting them to scrap the album as it was too "risky". As least with Amy Lee & co, their doing what they what they want.
The album is a big disappointment. I was pretty psyched after hearing that they'd take the "experimental route". What ended up on the album is just the same old formula.... bland and uninteresting to the ears. Btw.... [video=youtube;wVWazHTunSI]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVWazHTunSI&feature=feedf[/video]