The Open Door

Released October 3, 2006 via Wind-up, The Open Door is Amy Lee taking the wheel. With Ben Moody gone, she wrote most of it with guitarist Terry Balsamo, and with Dave Fortman producing at the Record Plant she pushed the band's gothic theatre as far as it would go. David Campbell's orchestral arrangements and Lee's own choral writing, recorded in an old chapel near Seattle, wrap the guitars in velvet and incense. "Lacrymosa" is built on the Lacrimosa from Mozart's Requiem, her favourite piece of music, and sounds like a cathedral collapsing in slow motion.

This is Lee's record in every sense. "Call Me When You're Sober" bites back at an ex with a sneer and a chorus that went Top 10, "Sweet Sacrifice" opens the album with riffs like a slammed door and earned a Grammy nomination, and "Lithium" sinks into its own melancholy. The Los Angeles Times heard "personal confession, high theater and head-banging rock," and The Independent heard bombast. Both were right, and the tension between them is the appeal. It sold over 447,000 copies in its first US week.

This is the MegaStar Middle East regional pressing, distributed by Sony BMG and manufactured in the EU: the licensed regional edition, still sealed.