Evanescence Opens (and Closes) the Door

Evanescence's new album cover depicts lead singer Amy Lee in a white dress walking through a backlit, castle-like door. Her pale skin gives her the look of a vampire princess who's decided to face the day—even if it kills her.

Given such imagery, it's no surprise that tendrils of light and dark swirl and intertwine throughout the band's encore, The Open Door, which debuted at No. 1. Sonically, Lee's familiar operatic voice again soars above grinding guitars and industrial drum loops (think Linkin Park or Nine Inch Nails with a goth diva out front). The 14 million global fans who snatched up 2003's Fallen should feel right at home.

A closer listen, however, reveals significant lyrical changes—specifically, fewer Christian allusions. According to Lee, that's because original guitarist/co-founder Ben Moody, who left the band in 2003, was the author of Evanescence's spiritual focus. Lee recently told Billboard magazine, "Can we please skip the Christian thing? I'm so over it. It's the lamest thing. I fought that from the beginning; I never wanted to be associated with it. It was a Ben thing. It's over. It's a new day." In another interview, however, she clarified her apparent hostility to the faith: "All the labels pinned on us made me furious. I've had to fight against that, so I've come across as anti-Christian, but that's not it. I believe in my personal life being separate from my work."

Make no mistake: Ben Moody's departure has left Amy Lee the undisputed leader of Evanescence, and the band's sophomore disc thus bears her unmistakable emotional imprint. Searingly personal lyrics, mostly about shattered relationships, mark The Open Door's 13 tracks.

Her Haunted Heart
If you want a thumbnail sketch of this disc, one line from "The Only One" gets the job done. "We're all grieving," Amy sings, "lost and bleeding." Indeed, there's more here about being lost than being found. Though a handful of songs include glimpses of self-awareness and determination not to repeat her mistakes, more often Lee sounds as if she's treading dark water in the wake of romantic failure.

One result of her unceasing angst is defiance. On "Sweet Sacrifice" Amy tells an ex, "Now that I'm unchained/... I'm gonna forget your name." Elsewhere, however, "Cloud Nine" illustrates how she's sunken into fatalism following another disappointment ("Guess it wasn't real all along/If I fall and all is lost/It's where I belong/... All alone").

A moment of clarity surfaces on "Lithium," when Amy recognizes how self-destructive tendencies have haunted her relationships ("In the end I guess I had to fall/Always find my place among the ashes"). She also sees that her emotional wasteland has become a twisted kind of "safe" place for her: "I want to stay in love with my sorrow/Oh but God I want to let it go."

That line is representative of The Open Door's ambiguous spiritual perspective. Is she taking God's name in vain? Or crying out to Him in prayer? Suffice it to say there's little evidence that she's actively seeking God's help or rejecting it in the album's few direct references to Him. Unlike her plaintive Fallen prayers, Amy doesn't sing much about her need for spiritual salvation on this album. She does, however, desperately crave the human love and acceptance that embody similarly salvific qualities.

Darker Hues
A few lyrics cross over from these melancholy musings into something more disquieting. "Sweet Sacrifice," for example, flirts with nihilism ("I sleep to die/Erase the silence/Erase my life/Our burning ashes/Blacken the day/A world of nothingness/Blow me away"). "Like You" finds Amy fantasizing about crawling into the grave with a deceased loved one ("I long to be like you/Lie cold in the ground like you/... There's room inside for two/... I'm coming for you"). I couldn't tell from the lyrics, but one reviewer identified this song as a tribute to a deceased sister. Still, impressionable listeners wrestling with suicidal thoughts might not be well served by this track. Finally, a few stray lines also allude to unrestrained sensuality. "Good Enough" advises, "Drink up sweet decadence/I can't say no to you."

Lee has been reluctant to take responsibility for ways fans might misappropriate such lyrics. She told Spin, "Don't make me a role model! I don't have the answers!" On the other hand, she understands how music helps people cope. "I'm all about making people feel like they're not alone. One fan told me they were seriously contemplating suicide, but that night they were playing our album, something pulled them back from the edge. I know how it feels to be completely alone and helpless, and the last thing you want to hear in that situation is 'it's going to be OK.' The only things that seems to really help is [to hear] someone else who has felt that low expressing those feelings to you."

For Amy Lee, then, feelings are the only things that really matter. In fact, in her music she insists that feelings and reality are virtually one and the same. "The Only One" asserts, "If I can't feel/... I'm not real." We live in a culture where the idea of objective truth has long since flown out the window. So as Amy seemingly keeps Ben's ideas about God at arm's length, it's no surprise that her emotions—no matter how untrustworthy they've proven in the past—fill that vacuum and become her only tangible reality, the only discernable path to "salvation." And that's a message that deserves careful scrutiny before walking blithely through this Open Door.