pt-paratroopa's Full Review: The Open Door [Digipak] * by Evanescence
I would be hard-pressed to find a band whose debut album captivated listeners more than Arkansas-based group Evanescence. Led by the womanly, deeply personal touch of vocalist and lyricist Amy Lee, their 2003 major-label debut, Fallen, became a runaway hit that inspired a large portion of the band's dedicated fanbase to hunt through a back catalogue of B-sides and independent releases (the most notable being the band's true debut album, 2000's Origin). Unfortunately, Evanescence slowly began to crumble under its fame, as Amy Lee's soaring, powerful studio vocals were often reduced to goat-like bleating during live performances, and Lee's desire for personal control has led to ghastly revolving door of departing musicians, the most notable of these being band co-founder, and her original collaborator, Ben Moody in late 2003.
The most striking characteristic about 2006's The Open Door is how much Lee's strengths have diminished in the three years that passed from Fallen. On that album, Lee's intimate lyrics and disturbingly tortured, effective vocal deliveries were able to help songs with some homogeneous instrumentation transcend mediocrity to reach dizzying heights. On The Open Door, which Lee hailed as featuring some of her most "mature" writing and experimental music, there is an alarming lack of melody, lyric inspiration or vocal conviction. When the band does try to sound progressive, the final product often ends up sounding incredibly pretentious.
The first two singles released to radio are sadly accurate depictions of what to expect here. "Call Me When You're Sober," featuring mindless riffs and a hideously husky/out-of-place vocal performance from Lee, is a repetitive mess which started out jarring but has become downright annoying due to overexposure. Written for her drug-addicted ex-boyfriend (Seether's Shaun Morgan), the childish lyrics make Lee seem like a passive-aggressive bully instead of a victim. Equally bad, and serving as a clear contrast to the haunting ballads on Fallen, is the sucky "Lithium." Bland and plodding, with barely any emotion and even less of a hook, the most notable thing about the track is how whimpery and poorly-controlled the vocals sound, as there are a lot of noticeable breaks between words due to Lee gasping for air.
I tried very hard to find good in The Open Door, and my efforts weren't entirely in vain. Opener "Sweet Sacrifice" and third track "Weight of the World" are two of the harder-hitting songs musically, both driving along at a good pace. However, the overdramatic lyrical cliches of both songs are not given enough support by the vocals: "Sweet Sacrifice" sees a wildly inconsistent Lee sometimes soaring and sometimes noticeably struggling with her performance, while "Weight of the World" simply doesn't have enough bite in Lee's voice to make the song a classic. Elsewhere, "Snow White Queen" is a well-written, somewhat-impactful narrative about Lee through the eyes of a stalker which, although egocentric, manages to work despite some vocal warbling and the random industrial noises thrown onto the song for no reason.
Album closer "Good Enough" removes the bad taste of "Lithium" by serving us a tender, vaguely jazzy piano-and-strings ballad that sees Lee finally displaying her range and ability to evoke emotion as a singer. The lyrics, a dedication to Lee's husband, are notably bright compared to the non-descript, angst-driven disasters that pepper the album. However, it is one of these angrier songs that is actually the strongest one featured: "Lacrymosa" is one of the few experimental tracks on Door that accomplishes its mission. Lee's vocals are spot-on and, paired with the chilling backing choir, the intensity of the song is nailed with some nice affectations that only strengthen the kiss-off of Lee as the woman scorned:
I can't change who I am, not this time... and you can blame it on me...
And set your guilt free, honey... I don't wanna hold you back now, love.
Unfortunately, this brilliant song is followed by its antithesis in the form of the utterly awful "Like You." This is one of the few songs that has gotten near-universal praise but, as I feel it's representative of the problems of the album as a whole, I just hate it. The effective lyrics, written about Amy's deceased sister, are actively undermined by a vocal performance of Lee insincerely and overdramatically moaning about how she longs to share the grave of her relative. Even worse, the boring verses and droning choruses gradually build up to a guitar-and-drum explosion during the final minute that sounds both incredibly out of place and like a deliberate attempt to recreate the radio version of "My Immortal," which pulled off the same trick much more effectively. The song ends up sounding like a pretentious, energy-draining nightmare as a result.
The rest of the songs on this album tend to fall much closer to the ill-conceived likes of "Like You" in that Lee tries and tries to sound mature and progressive but ends up coming off less effectively than she did on Fallen. "Cloud Nine" goes out of its way to toss in spooky wind-like moaning and conceals Lee's vocals with effects; it doesn't work. "Your Star," which begins with the single worst vocal on the album (Amy straining to make I can't seeeee yourrrrr starrrrrr sound pained and thought-provoking but only succeeding in sounding like an amateur singer who doesn't know her own vocal limitations), is just one of four bad songs piled at the end of the album; the only truly entertaining moment between this entire group is the humorously out-of-place sample of a duck quacking that opens "The Only One."
The only word that can be used to describe The Open Door is "disappointment." A maze of desperate vocal performances, lyrics that fail at achieving depth and musical experiments that generally sound fall flat, this album has little in common with, say, Within Temptation's Heart of Everything. At the core of this album's problems is the fact that Lee, despite her endless commentary about how happy she was with The Open Door and its "maturity," shows a complete regression as both a convincing lyricist and, more importantly, vocalist.
This is the same woman who was previously able to take an tortured lyric like "Watching me, wanting me, I can feel you pull me down / Fearing you, loving you, I won't let you pull me down," from Fallen's best song ("Haunted") and sing it as if it were an earth-shattering revelation. Why she's suddenly warbling, gasping and struggling just to hit basic high notes is a complete mystery to me. Due to the inconsistent and generally underwhelming lyrics and vocals, the emotional impact of the album is severely reduced. And with the rest of the band basically serving as a bunch of drones who play with no creativity, The Open Door is doomed to eternity as a muddled, uneven letdown.
Plus, the album was released as a Digipak, and Digipaks are freaking godawful.
Two stars awarded for those rare glimpses, which are unfortunately surrounded by a giant mess, of a woman who was previously so captivating.
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