CD REVIEW
The Open Door
Evanescence
Wind-Up Records, LLC
You have to be of a certain age to appreciate the gothic, or even to dress in the gothic style. A 40-year-old sporting a wild cloud of black hair and a blood-red mouth, dressed in black, will likely be shoved into the nearest open grave; only the young can don the image and stay unscathed.
Luckily for rock band Evanescence, bandleader and vocalist Amy Lee can only be described as a necrophiliac's dream. We first saw her lying marble-pale and delicate-pretty on a bed of satin, and then free-falling out the window in the video "Bring Me to Life," off the band's multi-platinum (major-label) debut album Fallen and the Daredevil Original Sound Track album.
With the newly released Evanescence album, titled The Open Door, and after much drama in her personal and professional life, Lee remains a gothic diva: standing in full ball-dress at the threshold of a nearly open crypt, looking over her shoulder; wearing a red hooded cloak and caressing a wolfhound; skulking backstage while her doppelganger sings in the light; and levitating in the video of the first single, "Call Me When You're Sober."
The new album maintains the band's mournful bent. As Lee was successful in beating erstwhile boyfriend Ben Moody in the struggle for creative control, he has been replaced by guitarist Terry Balsamo, who, together with the remaining Evaboys - guitarist John LeCompt, drummer Rocky Gray, and bassist Tim McCord (who replaced Will Boyd) - is eclipsed by her. In fact, the album is all about Lee, who as primary songwriter is generous with her catharsis.
The songs are a cocktail of defiant remonstration and plaintive entreaty. It gets difficult to swallow the brew as it's exhausting to listen to Lee harping on the same subject, particularly in "Sweet Sacrifice" (One day I'm gonna forget your name/and one sweet day, you're gonna drown in my lost pain); "Call Me When You're Sober" (Don't cry to me/if you loved me/you would be here with me/... you never call when you're sober/you only want it coz it's over); "Weight of the World" (If you love me/then let go of me/I won't be held down by who I used to be), to cite a few.
Loneliness is, of course, a theme; the main difference is that the songs convey how someone,
who is comfortable being in a state of despair, is struggling to overcome that despair. It's a little silly to make a case of one's own inability to escape from wallowing in self-pity, but Lee manages to pull it off, with a little more finesse in "Lacrymosa" (Now that you're gone/I feel like myself again/grieving the things I can't repair), which borrows Mozart's Requiem to max the drama, and "Lithium" (I want to stay in love with my sorrow/oh but God I want to let it go).
Evanescence in art tradition plays on the poignancy of transient beauty and temporal life. The emphasis is on life highlighted by death - like appreciating cherry blossoms all the more because they have only a brief moment of glory before being borne away by the wind. In contrast, the band Evanescence follows a gothic tradition that romanticizes death without exhibiting any love of life or at the very least a sense of humor about it. But then apparently, it sells.
Those who fancy themselves as bipolar schizophrenics, Chucky's Brides, or Anne Rice acolytes will likely rouse themselves from catatonia for the pleasure of listening to this album.
Evanescence is consistently in love with heavy metal beats, piano rock, and dark imagery
wrought by words like pain, silence, ashes, nothingness, sacrifice, cold ground, grieving,
bleeding. The Open Door may pay lip service to abandoning the gloom, but if Evanescence ever does, it's probable that they'll lose what hold they have on their fans.
Originally published on 17 November 2006 in BusinessWorld Weekender.