 Further comparisons have since been drawn between Evanescence and gothic metal groups like Within Temptation and Lacuna Coil.Critic Adrien Begrand of PopMatters wryly notes that while Lacuna Coil "had been tirelessly building a fanbase in Europe since the late 1990s with their listener-friendly brand of goth metal", they had been overshadowed by "a bunch of corn-fed kids from Arkansas with a big publicity machine behind them [taking] the very sound the Italian sextet had helped pioneer, and present it to the American suburban goth kids in a much more pop-oriented, dumbed down variation".Cammila Albertson of Allmusic similarly locates Evanescence as one step further from gothic metal, offering the description of the band as "a pop version of an already diluted brand of metal".