Evanescence - The Open Door
Wind-up Entertainment
Pop Goth
13 songs (54:10)
Release year: 2006
Evanescence, Wind-up Entertainment
Reviewed by Ross
The Open Door should perhaps be accredited to Amy Lee rather than Evanescence; throughout the album the rest of the band just don’t seem to get a look-in. The whole album is a platform for Amy to whine like a turbo about her poor life, aiming her wrath at all those who have pissed her off: Ben Moody - ex lead guitarist, co-founder and co-songwriter; ex bassist William Boyd; ex boyfriend Seether’s Shaun Morgan (Call Me When You’re Sober, I wonder who that’s about then?) and a fan who stalked her for a while. I know many, many songs are written from the heart but virtually a whole album full of self-pitying, oh poor me maudling makes you want to give her a good shake and tell her to get over herself. Even though guitarist Terry Balsamo gets recognized as co-songwriter, you have to wonder where his contribution is exactly. And here’s me been under the impression that there is no ‘I’ in ‘Band’.

Many bands’ second albums don’t quite match up to their debut; be it because they have decided to take a different direction; haven’t had the time to let loose their creativity because of touring; been under pressure from their label or myriad other reason. Then again, there are many band’s whose second album puts them on the musical map - Trivium anyone. The Open Door is strange in that it is more of the same of debut Fallen but stripped, shaved and pared down to the bare bones. Apart from Amy taking front and centre, (on her high horse) she keeps the attention on herself by dueting with her piano, even though more credit should probably be given to Mozart or Beethoven than to any original Amy Lee piano arranging. Gone are the crunchy, chugging guitar riffs and the soaring, memorable choruses; in their place are some electronic orchestra, programming and sampling, courtesy of DJ Lethal. When I hear the words electronic, programming and sampling to describe musical content and somebody called DJ something-or-another, ‘Nu-Metal’ pops into my head, and if Nu-Metal has been dying a slow death for a number of years now, why dump it in your new album? Perhaps the lack of serious guitaring is due to Terry Balsamo having a stroke aged 32, which he puts down to long-time headbanging. Even though, the guitaring sounds like he wandered into the studio, bashed out a few power chords into Pro-Tools and they were then copied and pasted wherever required. In fact, that goes for Bass and Drums as well, it sounds like they played the minimum they could get away with relying on Amy and her piano to carry the album.

Fallen went multi platinum shifting over 14.5 million to Pseudo-Goth Mallrats worldwide. Fallen was their entry record to what they thought was Metal, as many who should have known better labelled it. Many of these Mallrats have now matured and advanced into the realm of genuine Goth / Gothic and other Metal bands and other female fronted bands but will probably blindly buy The Open Door just through loyalty to their first ‘Metal’ band. That and your hormone fuelled fan-boy, or fan-girl lusting after the delectable Ms Lee. However, because they have progressed on to heavier bands, I think many of them are going to be disappointed that The Open Door doesn’t cut it for them any more. As they are presenting themselves on The Open Door, hold Evanescence up to bands such as Tarja era Nightwish, Lacuna Coil, To-Mera et al you will find them sorely lacking.

While writing this review, (end November 06) The Open door has went platinum in the US. Somehow I can’t seem to get out of my mind the kind of person who is going to buy this album. If you think back to all the under-age drinking parties, open-house parties and other parties where copious amounts of hooch were consumed, have you ever noticed that invariably, just before everything goes pear-shaped, there always seems to be a girl sitting on the stairs, bawling her eyes out, uttering things like “Why?”, “The Bastard!”, “But I love him.”, “The Bitch!” etc. She’s always surrounded by so-called friends trying to tell her that He / She / It is not worth it yet secretly breathing a sigh of relief that they are not in this poor wretch’s shoes. They are the people who are going to devour this record. They’re gonna lock themselves in their room bawling into their teddy soaking up the ‘Poor Me’ lyrics and feel so much better that even the enormously successful Amy Lee gets dumped on and see her as some kind of kindred spirit. I suppose it takes a great deal of courage to air your personal problems, in song, to so many people, but to be honest, when your biggest problems are a couple of failed relationships and being hero worshipped by fans, you get to thinking “Get over yourself girl, be thankful for what you’ve got! namely an under-worked band that could produce some awesome music if you let go your selfish need to have everybody feeling sorry for you!”

Okay, I know I’m gonna get slated for this review but c’mon, you know Evanescence is not just Amy Lee, and they can do much better than this as a BAND! Evanescence started of as Amy Lee, Ben Moody and some session musicians. If this album is anything to go by Evanescence is going to be Amy Lee…… Oh, and some other musicians if she doesn’t loosen the reins some. It’s even gone as far as their website where I had to do a whole lot of digging to find out who else done what in the band. Hopefully she’ll have got over herself for the next album and Evanescence will be back on track.
Killing Songs :
Ross quoted 60 / 100
Chris quoted 55 / 100
Ken quoted 85 / 100
Other albums by Evanescence that we have reviewed:
Evanescence - Evanescence reviewed by Goat and quoted 71 / 100
Evanescence - Fallen reviewed by Jack and quoted 95 / 100
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