I've only heard a few snippets and read people's reviews and some lyrics, and it doesn't great. I'm mixed.

Lyrically, the messages seem a lot less subtle and too "in your face" for my liking. With Fallen I could relate to so many songs in different ways, but here (keep in mind that I did not hear the full album, so feel free to correct me) the lyrics are just in-your-face, for example... "If you loved me, you would be here with me" as opposed to "I tried to kill the pain, but only brought more, so much more". Again, I did not hear the entire album, corret me iff I am wrong.

Lose Control and Cloud Nine: bad mixing. Does anyone else agree that the mixing was very weird? It sounds unpleasent to the ear and the vocals are not clear enough, even if they're good. I really hope that will be changed by the time the album comes out (not happening, eh?) because I feel like some of the bad reviews are coming from that. Please fix that, makes the songs sound unfinished.

With that said, a few clips and lyrics don't mean too much. I just hope the lyrics are as good as they are in Fallen, and the vocals sound clearer.

Lithium is amazing, by the way. WOW.

Hmmm.

At this rate, we will be on The Open Door Discussion Part XX by the time the album is released.

Oh, the drama.

Anyway, as I've said before I love this album.
But I definitely understand why some don't.

Especially from first listen, even for me, it was extremely difficult to get into it. I wasn't expecting anything, but what I heard still threw me off guard. It was a little strange at first, but then I listened to it a second time and had more appreciation for it.

I can't really agree that all the songs kind of blend together. I can maybe see a hint of it, but I think the songs on 'Fallen' blended more together than this album. This album, to me, is full of 13 different tracks, that probably could of each been on a different album by different artists. That's how it sounds to me. I absolutely love it, each track brings something else to the album, and I think the reason some people might not like it, is because there isn't one theme in the CD. It's just all their experiences put into one, and they pretty much ran through every emotion.

Hmm.
That's just my thought.

I totally understand everyone's opinion though. We are all different, with all different music tastes. Evanescence's music has changed. So people who once loved Evanescence's music, might not love the music on this album. It's a completely new sound.

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Dont' let that get close to you, it took me at least a month to be able to interpret those charts. If I had added a discription of my intuition to the post, I wouldn't understand it myself.

Weightening means mangling statistics so that they make more sense and/or are fairer, ie. the resulting statistics are a function of the raw statistics where that function (mathematically spoken) weights different aspects of the statistic itself (play count) against some indicator (1 user played it 2000000 times), so that, in this case, the charts are suited for the taste of a broader audience and non-ev fans wouldn't bitch about unfairness. last.fm keeps that algorithm secret to prevent hyping by obsessive fans (which, from the programmer's and/or interpreter's point of view, is spamming).

So, in fact, both numbers (cmwys on place 33 and 3, ev on place 33 and 10) are true, as it depends on how much you care about people who hear it in an endless loop or try to fake the statistics. Choose your favorite, both are false.

All of that stuff means (at least to me) more than the official charts which just measure how many times an album is sold instead of how many times it is heard and owned, which should give you a number close to popularity... both on how many people like it as well as how much the people who listen to it like it (replay-count). It's eg. remarkable how the beatles kind of reserved place three for them, though they shouldn't have big sales anymore.
You also won't see britney scoring number one there.

All clearity resolved ?

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For me:

- TOD > Fallen

It has more variety, and more instruments. :-) It's not depressing all the time like Fallen was. It's cool. I loved it.

I'm sorry for bashing out at the TOD dislikers. I guess only some of us will stay but unfortunately, others will leave?

I sure hope not.

- Danny

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I undertsand that not everyone is into the voice distortions and you don't have to be, but remember, that's for the cd. You will get to hear Amy sing those parts without the programming once you see Ev live. They had more money to work with when it comes to the production of this cd, maybe they wanted to do stuff like this before, but never had the chance because of $$$. Origin for example had that low-key programming, that still sounds pretty darn cool for what it is.

Also, please don't go basing your opinion on what others think, other peoples reviews or what not. People should listen to it for themselves and make up their own mind up about it, instead of having others decide what sounds good or what does not. I'm just throwing that out there.

Hello, my name is DhammaSeeker, I like The Open Door, and I am not ashamed. If shame were going to play any part in this, it should have come in long ago. Somewhere around August of 2003.

I had two random people IM me last night asking my opinion on the album, so I figured I may as well just write it out. Where to start?

In all honesty, on first listen, I was what you might call 'disappointed' because I didn't hear any particular song (or three as on Fallen) that immediately jumped out and resonated with me. I believe this is what the song writing inclined would call a 'hook'. As far as I'm concerned, there's no song on The Open Door with a hook. For some people, that is a show stopper. I went back for seconds, and then thirds. After I thought about it, there are plenty of artists that I really enjoy but whose albums are also hookless.

And lo, on the third day, I began to open up to the album. I thought that I had been listening with unprejudiced ears--without preconceptions of what I wanted it to be, but I guess my subconscious had other plans. Being at the particular spot on the grapevine where I find myself, I had heard various things that primed me for disappointment. The track titles alone gave me serious pause when I first saw them. But I'm a person who focuses more on the music than the lyrics and titles. Amy could be singing about killing kittens, and so long as I liked it musically, I probably wouldn't notice.

The style of The Open Door strays from the Evanescence we used to know so severely that it's leaving many people in a fog of confusion and dismay. People came to Evanescence prior to now because something resonated with them in the work on Origin or Fallen. That, or they were personal devotees of one or another of the band members. The personal devotee fan type has suffered massive casualties over the years. The demi-gods have been falling away for one reason or another, and the affinity of the pilgrims changes, understandably.

The fact of the matter is that Evanescence has been Amy Lee ever since that fateful day in October three years ago. Some people have been holding onto the hope that a group effort would replace the song-writing duo that had been Amy and Ben. Alas, that's not how Amy rolls. Whether or not your head is stuck in the sand will not change the way that she does business. For good or bad, that's just the way it is.

After thinking about it and hearing about some of the drama involved, I'm more respectful of John and Rocky because they continue to perform as professional musicians and haven't gotten caught up in the high school bullshit that would have torn asunder people of lesser character.

But back to the album, and my uninformed opinion on it.

The Open Door is not a rock album; not in the traditional or conventional sense. Evanescence has always been all over the place genre wise. That's why the cross-section of the fan base has always been so diverse. That's why I'm a fan along with people less than half my age and people more than twice my age. There's something special about a group that can draw in that diverse of a fan base.

For several months now, I've known that the release of The Open Door would be a critical time for the current Evanescence fan base. I had no idea what it was going to sound like, but I knew that some of the current fans were certain to dislike it and there would be new fans to bring into the fold. This is a natural process that we should all just learn to accept. We're going to have evboarders who will be unable to reconcile themselves to the new direction. This is okay. They are no less deserving of our respect.

Then there is the other camp of people who think that Amy Lee can do no wrong. News flash: Amy Lee is a human being just like you and me. And lord knows that we all fuck up from time to time. This, too, is okay.

I'm of the opinion that The Open Door is a fine sophomore effort and shows promise of things to come in the future. Hopefully Wind-up won't tour this album into the ground like they did Fallen, and the writing process can commence on the next album in about a year.

Sure there are things here and there that I wish were different than they are on The Open Door, but the same holds true for me with Fallen. Life will go on.

The preceding has been the personal opinion of DhammaSeeker and does not constitute an official or unofficial position of evboard.com, Evanescence, Wind-up Records, the RIAA, MySpace.com, the NSA, or Colin.

Dhamma...you are officially my favorite person EVER right now. <333333

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The reviews are too mixed. I wish people wouldn't just decide the album is not good because it's less commercial. Give it 5 listens and get into it. I'm skeptic, but I will buy the album.

The reviews are worrying though. Evanescence hasn't even performed yet, no promotion whatsoever, the CD leaked a month before the release date and the reviews are mixed - I assume mostly by people who never really gave it a chance.

I feel like the only person on this board that has not heard the whole album yet. *cries* Lucky you guys! I can only get on my computer on the weekends. So, I guess I missed out on the leak. I guess I have got alot of catching up to do.

~Lacie