Music Review - The Open Door, Evanescence

I review The Open Door, Evanescence’s new CD.

I’ve been listening to a borrowed copy of The Open Door repeatedly over the last week and a half, and I have to say that as a debut album, it’s pretty good.  Not amazing, but pretty good.

Unfortunately for Evanescence, it’s not their debut album.  Fallen holds that position, and precisely because Fallen was truly an amazing album, The Open Door fades badly in comparison.

Generally speaking, the songs on The Open Door are decent.  Lots of guitar, choral music, distorted vocals, and piano, and it’s definitely in the same vein as the Fallen.  The problem is that it all sounds over-produced to me.  For example, the distorted vocals I mentioned are on too many songs - distortion is something that should be used sparingly, and on this CD it seems to be everywhere.  Amy Lee’s voice is excellent - distorting it just serves to weaken her otherwise powerful voice.

Another issue is that songs that should be slow and powerful mix in too much heavy percussion and guitar.  The best song on this album, “Lithium,” starts great - piano and Amy’s voice belting it out.  But then, after the first few lines, when new instruments are usually mixed into the song, heavy guitar is added at a tempo that distracts you from the otherwise powerful vocals.  The second best song, “Snow White Queen,” is very singable and catchy, but the distorted vocals it starts with and that extend throughout the song just make the words harder to understand and add nothing to the quality of the song in toto.

Other songs run too long.  “The Only One” has a totally pointless vocal line (unless the point was to give Amy Lee yet another vocal exclamation point) that extends the end of the song an extra few seconds.  Sure, it’s only a few seconds, but if it had been cut short, it would have ended the song more powerfully.  Song endings can’t make a good song bad, but it can make a good song great.  I don’t know if “The Only One” could have been great, but it certainly could have been better than it is.

As I said early on, this was a loaner from a friend (Thanks, John!).  I wanted to borrow the CD in case it totally sucked.  I’m pleased to say that I don’t feel The Open Door totally sucks, and I may yet buy myself a copy for future listening pleasure.  And I hope that The Open Door does well enough that Evanescence sticks around for another CD.  The Open Door is a sophomore effort, certainly, but based on the strength of Fallen and now The Open Door, I’d like to see if they learn from their mistakes on this CD and produce a better listening experience on their next one.