Evanescence - The Open Door
Rating
RIYL
Within TemptationAlev
Lacuna Coil
Label
Wind Up RecordsTracklist
1. Sweet Sacrifice2. Call Me When You're Sober
3. Weight of the World
4. Lithium
5. Cloud Nine
6. Snow White Queen
7. Lacrymosa
8. Like You
9. Lose Control
10. The Only One
11. Your Star
12. All That I'm Living For
13. Good Enough
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It’s time to let the Decoy Music regulars in on a little subject that’s fairly taboo: Evanescence doesn’t suck. Of course, it goes without saying that their music is anything but groundbreaking. In spite of that truth, when seeded on the whim of an awful movie’s soundtrack propelling the full release to roughly 14 million sales globally, there’s no denying that something was done right. Rarely does an artist become a household name by some strange fluke of nature. Therefore, trying to excuse it through clever marketing, prowess at capitalizing on trends or just being in the right place at the right time, it all seems pretty pointless, right?
All of the above could have been so true had Amy Lee just quit while she was ahead. Nonetheless, we are now introduced to The Open Door, the anticipated follow-up to Evanescence’s 2003 break out. On this new release Amy and crew prove every one of their detractors to be exactly right. Just what is it that they were right about? Oh, just the same old same old. The group has no real talent; they aren’t so much a rock band as they are a factory assembled Pop-Tart cooked up by their label to successfully capitalize on trends. Let’s not forget the popular complaint. Much like Godsmack, Nickelback, Linkin Park, Disturbed and the rest of their modern rock cum laude, each new album produced will be exactly the same as the prior. If that last argument wasn’t clear enough, it can be stated a little more directly. The Open Door is a carbon copy of Fallen.
Does it really matter, though? What kid who listens to this band actually cares about originality or quality? Better yet, what kid who listens to this actually knows what those things are? After all, kids take what is readily given to them. Knowing this, it’s a cinch that they will absolutely LOVE all the Pop-Tarts that TRL serves up as after-school snacks. They are quick, easily accessible, very sweet, and last but certainly not least, extremely “colorful.” It’s a little difficult not to get bored or have the taste buds go bland for something like that. So gauging by those standards, it’s probably safe to say that The Open Door is at least an album slightly above mediocre, right? Wrong. If you’re even somewhat familiar with Evanescence’s prior work, which is unlikely that you wouldn’t be, and in turn having heard the new release’s decisively weak first single, “Call Me When You’re Sober,” you’ve got very good notion as to what the rest of the material is like. While the purest aficionados will be eating it up, lightening won’t be striking twice.
Evanescence’s The Open Door isn’t like buying the Kellogg’s brand that most are accustomed to. It’s like running low in the wallet and being forced to buy those off-brand Hy-Top pastries -- which can also go by whatever grocery store name one chooses to visit. Even though The Open Door mirrors Fallen in the design of being the same radio-ready song recorded over and over again, there’s a significant drop in the hooking power of the melodies. Besides illegal downloading and copying, when the label starts grumbling about lower album sales, the blame is going to accurately fall upon the shoulders of all the line-up changes. This would be correct because with Terry Balsamo replacing Ben Moody on guitars, Amy Lee fails miserably at creating the same record-selling chemistry she had with her prior band mate. The culprit could be Balsamo forgetting everything he knew about creating infectious rhythms since leaving Cold, but it’s more likely the stress of working on the follow-up recording of a high profile band just being too much for the guy.
All the more crappy, the rest of the band isn’t doing much to try to add anything remarkable to the instrumental side of the album. Outside of non-existent bass and drumming, there’s some key and sample work here and there, all of it sloppily glued on in a flimsy effort to try to give the faceless tracks their own identities. With it all pushed so far to the background creative wise, each song pretty much follows the same structure of trying to rely on the front-woman’s voice to carry it. Since Amy Lee is completely one-dimensional and whines in the same exact range without end, The Open Door quickly wears out its already questionable welcome at about halfway through its unnecessary 13 tracks. Those daring to venture beyond the midway marker of this crew’s bad mesh will find that this effort has long since ceased being a cheap knock-off and is more like trying to digest a horrid after-school combination of Lays ranch flavored chips, Oreo cookies and room temperature orange juice.
As if there was ever any doubt about it before, this album solidifies Evanescence’s placement amongst the ranks of cookie cutter artists of the late and new century. The content is so generically processed that if Amy Lee ever decided to depart from the group and left all the rights to Wind-Up Records, as a replacement they could give a pseudo-goth makeover to someone like Kelly Clarkson or the WWE’s Lillian Garcia, and it would be an arduous test to recognize the difference.
--MJ Austin
Comments
Minnesota
If you want good female fronted nu-metal go listen to Leave's Eyes or Lacuna Coil.
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VT
I disagree. I combined both albums onto one CD and most of the songs have that same NuMetal formula. Continuous single cord riffs and tables. Great albums, though.
My Top Songs of '09
The Appleseed Cast//as the little things go
Caspian//sycamore
Sunwrae//Chinook Winds
Dredg//down to the seller
If These Trees Could Talk//the sun is in the north
From Monument to Masses//an ounce of prevention
Straylight Run//i'm through with the past
LpShinobi's Post-Rock and Shoegazing Recommendation, via YouTube
Lpshinobi's Post-Rock Band, New Song Posted
Cincinnati
I don't care what others say...Linkin Park is the shit. Both their album have produced catchy track after track. They need to stop messin around with that rap crap act and get down to a new album.
As for the subject at hand...400K+!!!! holy hell. that's ridiculous. I have their first cd...needless to say I didn't pay for it, but it (had) a few decent tracks on it. But then I remember that I don't like female lead vocals in a rock band (except Shirley from "Garbage" 1st album)and I get tired of it. But that's incredible they sold that many albums already...must just be their's not that many bands out there in rock with that strong female presence.
Anytown USA
You play to win the game.
Minnesota
I know. It's so annoying that the only thing she wants to listen to while we're making out is this damn CD. I wish she'd put on some Rammstein again, like we used to do it - angry German style. She's a grunter, you know.
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