Personally, I've had The Other Door on pretty much constant play for the last four days and it has really grown on me. The key for me was taking a really close listen to the lyrics, especially on songs like Good Enough and Lithium.

The other thing that was helpful for me was to approach this as an Amy Lee solo album. I have to say, if there is one thing I'm most disappointed about this whole ordeal since Ben left is that they didn't retire the Evanescence name until the fates decide that a reunion was possible -- that's not something that I realized until hearing this music. Not the end of the world, of course, but I can't help but thinking that if this album was called Amy Lee: The Open Door and they moved even farther away from the Evanescence sound, it'd make things much more approachable by foregrounding the fact that this is a personal account of Amy's blossoming independence, if you will.

I also think that a few of these songs just need more work -- a trait pretty typical of sophomore offerings, really. You spend your whole life developing the material on your debut and then you get a year or two to come up with the material for the followup, so that's to be expected, I guess, but a little disappointing because Evanescence materialized out of nowhere with such a well-developed back catalogue. (If I only had Fallen as a reference point, I doubt I would be disappointed by this album -- but then again, if I only had Fallen as a reference point, I wouldn't be here.)

So I'm coming around, but I can't escape the feeling that The Open Door is half-cooked as an album. But I can't wait to see how this material is treated live because with a more thoughtful sequencing and a neccessarily more bare presentation, this could be really good, if not great.