"Fallen". No, "The open door". No, "Fallen". Um...
Artiste: Evanescence
Nationality: American
Album: The open door
Year: 2006
Label: Wind-Up
Genre: Goth rock
Tracks:
Sweet sacrifice
Call me when you're sober
Weight of the world
Lithium
Cloud nine
Snow White queen
Lacrymosa
Like you
Lose control
The only one
Your star
All that I'm living for
Good enough
Chronological position: Second album
Familiarity: “Fallen”
Initial impression: Three tracks in, I must say I find a lot of this very samey, and not too interesting.
Best track(s): Lithium, Lacrymosa, Good enough, Lose control
Worst track(s): Snow White queen, Sweet sacrifice, Call me when you're sober
Comments: I seem to have this love/hate relationship with Evanescence: I like some of their music but find their albums hard to get into. I was quite disappointed with “Fallen”, having set myself up to believe it was going to be a great album, to find out it only had (for me) a few good tracks, most of which I already knew as singles. I was upset that digging down below the surface I didn't come across the gems I had expected would be hidden there, so here's a second chance to see if Evanescence can impress me. They should, really: they play the kind of music I like, and the image is good too. But somehow “Fallen” just fell (sorry) short of my expectations. But it's often the case that the second album can be vastly superior to the debut, the bugs having been worked out, so to speak. So is that the case here?
Well, up until
Lithium I'm distinctly unimpressed. This is a good song, but is it the only one? There's something different at least from what has gone before in
Cloud nine, with an almost dancy opening blown away by a big metal groove, and it's certainly interesting, and
Lacrymosa has a very dramatic, almost operatic production, with some nice strings and tinkling piano, utilising a full choir and also incorporating Mozart's
Lacrimosa from his
Requiem. As the song is basically built around the classical piece, it's probably not fair to credit Evanescence with the quality of the track, but they use the melody well.
Like you is another “heavy ballad”, such as can be found on their debut, while
Lose control begins as a nicely laidback piano-driven piece, but then kicks in heavy guitar and kind of ruins the song, for me anyway. With songs like
My immortal and
Hello on the previous album, it kind of annoys me that they won't sit back and do a proper ballad, some of the songs starting off that way but metamorphosing in what becomes a tiresomely repititious way into heavier, harder songs. Depressingly, I see that looking back over my review of their debut which I wrote almost a year ago to the day, I had something the same to say; the songs all sort of began to blend one into the other, as is certainly happening here, with some of them at least. So sadly it would seem there hasn't been any marked change in Evanescence's approach to their music, which is bad news for me.
The only one continues the practice of piano-ballad-becomes-hard-rocker, though I begin to wonder if
Your star is finally a proper ballad? There's a certain slow-dancey beat behind it but then... that damn hard guitar cuts in again and off we go. Still, it's probably the closest thing to a ballad on the album. Nice choir participation too, though this album isn't doing itself any favours by constantly turning possible ballads into hard rockers. Sigh. Thankfully, we finally get the longed-for ballad in the closer,
Good enough, and it's been worth waiting for. But sadly I can't say the same about this album.
More or less echoing my major point from last August's review of “Fallen”: it just all sounds very much the same to me, and not as if Evanescence have taken any new leaps or indeed any chances with their second album. Not for me.
Overall impression: Extension of “Fallen”, nothing terribly new. My opinion of this band has not changed. That's a bad thing, in case you didn't read last year's review of their debut in my main journal.
Intention: Think I'll call it a day as far as Evanescence are concerned.