The Open Door

by

Evanescence

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Major success is a tough act to follow. Selling 6 million copies of its first major label studio album, Fallen, and delivering the mega hits "Bring Me to Life" and "My Immortal", Evanescence and front-woman Amy Lee return with the hard charging new album, The Open Door. Despite Ben Moody's acrimonious departure, Terry Balsamo has made a great songwriting pair with Lee. Drawing its strength from hard guitar riffs and Lee's soaring voice, the record offers quite a few nuggets of pure rock bliss, enough to get your head banging and your stereo blasting.

Opening track "Sweet Sacrifice" flat out rocks, its thundering guitars matching perfectly with Amy Lee's towering voice. "Call Me When You're Sober" is an wonderfully angry song with dual guitars trading rhythm and melody lines. "Weight of the World" is a fast paced rocker that isn't too distinctive. "Lithium" is a nice piano ballad with strings showcasing Amy Lee's vocal and lyrical range. "Snow White Queen" is chaotic and disorganized, but the classically influenced "Lachrymosa" is fantastic, a bizarrly fascinating mix of strings, guitar, piano, and choir that just flat out soars. This song would be a perfect addition to any soundtrack.

"Like You", a mid-tempo piano-based track, smartly keeps the guitars in the back of the mix until the crescendo. "Weight of the World" and "Cloud Nine" are solid up-tempo rockers laced with grinding guitar work while "All That I'm Living For" and "Good Enough" are more piano-based emotional tracks. "Lose Control" has a dark piano melody that bursts into crunching guitar on the chorus. "The Only One" is a dark ode that is one of the strongest songs on the album emotionally.

Strongly produced to take full advantage of Lee's towering voice, The Open Door is full of growling guitar riffs and emotive piano melodies. The songwriting is solid, and in some cases, exceptional. The loss of Ben Moody is more than made up by the songwriting team of Lee and Balsaro, and this album is one sure to please Evanescence fans and make some converts with some of the singles. Recommended.

A.G. Corwin

St.Louis, MO

I realize that I will probably be shouted down for saying anything disparaging about this album, but I have to be honest. This album was a disappointment for me. Let's talk turkey here. I'll start with the good. Amy has a great voice and it can really get under your skin and stay with you. I loved her voice on Fallen, however here she has stretched herself to a new place and is doing things I think she simply wasn't ready for in the past. The songs are well written and most of them stick in your head and are worthy of repeat listening. If you are an Amy fan then I have no doubt you will not be disappointed.

So, what's my problem with it? First off, what made Fallen so great was the rawness of it. It was unpolished and unapologetic about it. It made the album very in your face and deeply personal to the listener. The songs were held up by Amy's voice and some really cool guitar riffs. The lyrics were dark, haunting and deliciously beautiful. Everything the second album is not (for me). The new album is way too polished and way, way over produced (I have no doubt the record company had everything to do with that). In spite of her much better vocal work (technically) I found a lot of her new techniques kind of cliche and put a lot of distance between her and the listener; much less personal and much more mainstream. The guitar work is, well, kind of boring; not nearly as crunchy and erratic, once again too main-streamish. A powerful tool in music is the ability to use dissonance in your work. It can add a lot of impact to a piece. It is WAY overused here. Too much dissonance and then it becomes overpowering and takes away from the flow of your song. I was simply unhappy with a lot of the songs and the ones I do like just don't have the same "feel" as Fallen and I found my mind wandering when playing the album.

Overall I am unhappy with the new album, especially considering how long I waited for it. It seemed like it took f-o-r-e-v-e-r to finally see the light of day. Now, that it's here I'm sad that the sound of Evanescence has changed so much. Amy kicks serious behind, but I think that 50% of the creative genius of the first album walked out the door. I'm still a fan and I'm not sad that I bought the album, but it will get very limited listening time after spinning it four or five times. Part of my problem is that in getting bored waiting for this album to hit the shelves I stumbled upon a huge untapped market of great metal/gothic/whatever type bands with powerful female vocalists. I got spoiled by some of the HUGE, HUGE talent out there; bands like Within Temptation, Stream of Passion, The Gathering, Beseech, Xandria, Mortal Love, Ambeon to name a few and even some more technical bands like Nightwish, Nemesea and whole slew of others. If you get bored and want some other bands in your repetoire, then I recommend checking some of them out.

Most importantly though, I am in no way saying that The Open Door is a bad album. I am also in no way dissing Amy. I am simply sharing my limited viewpoint and nothing more. So, try to keep the flames down to a minimum. ;)