To a lot of people, it probably sounded promising but likely to fail. Three former Evanescence members hook up with a former American Idle contestant and make a song that sounds almost exactly like early Ev. Great tune, many said, but a whole album of this stuff?

The reality of the situation, as reflected not only in the wake of Evanescence’s second album (2006’s The Open Door [Wind-Up]) but in the end result of We Are The Fallen’s first album, speaks volumes. Without guitarist, songwriter and Ev co-founder Ben Moody involved, The Open Door was less of a follow-up to Evanescence’s first album Fallen and more of the debut of the Amy Lee Project. Talk in the Fallen days of diva-like behavior on Lee’s part intensified in 2007 when, without warning or reason and with a co-headlining spot on that summer’s Family Values Tour looming, Lee summarily fired guitarist and founding member John LeCompt. Ev’s drummer, Rocky Gray, quit in disgust in the wake of LeCompt’s seemingly uncalled for dismissal, joining his fellow ex-Ev in a project called Machina, which self-released a CD EP several months later.

Yes, We Are The Fallen’s Tear Down The World sounds remarkably like Evanescence did on Fallen. Then again, given that four of the people primarily responsible for that album’s sound (one-time Ev keyboardist David Hodges contributes to the album as a session keyboardist) are involved and in the same studio for the first time since the sessions for Fallen ended, it’s a no-brainer. Without a note or a song wasted, Tear Down The World proceeds to be the true follow-up to Evanescence’s Fallen. Amy Lee’s imitations of Tori Amos are long gone, allowing the Moody/LeCompt/Gray triumvirate and new bassist Marty O’Brien to get down to rocking. A few faster tempos are thrown in, Moody and/or LeCompt even throw in a couple of guitar solos (the CD’s liner notes don’t identify who is lead and who is rhythm) and, capping it all off, Carly Smithson provides a much more fully-bodied voice to fit the music, making Amy Lee’s own vocals seem weak in comparison.

Simply put, this is what The Open Door should have been like.

Five out of five stars.

#10) MILDRED AND THE MICE “I Like My Mice (Dead)” (Third Man)
Officially supposed to be a socially awkward goth chick from a small town in Kentucky, but more rumored to be the wife of Jack White playing a rather eccentric character, with a few Raconeturs/Dead Weather members posing as Mildred’s “band”. Either way, this is demented two-chord garage punk that makes The Cramps look like the Carpenters.

#9) BIF NAKED “I Won’t Cry (Fuck You 2)” (Her Royal Majesty)
Bif’s big comeback single after her cancer-forced layoff… and boy, did she come back swinging! Never before did a standard 50’s doo-wop chord sequence sound so menacing.

#8) WE ARE THE FALLEN “Bury Me Alive” (self-released)
Mistake this for Evanescence, and you wouldn’t be far off, as three-fifths of this group were the creative hub of Ev. Throw in a more fuller-bodied-voice compared to Amy Lee (courtesy of American Idle alumni Carly Smithson), and you’ll wonder why The Open Door didn’t sound like this. The band had planned to slip out leaked tracks every month or so, but fate – and a contract with Universal Music – intervened. Now this is just a teaser for next spring’s LP.

#7) CARL SAGAN “A Glorious Dawn” (Third Man)
This song – comprising of AutoTuned monologues from the late scientist/TV personality’s Cosmos mini-series – started off as an experimental pro-science viral video with a free download available to those who wanted it. Then Jack White heard and saw the video, wanted to put it out on his own label, and the rest is history – just like the Voyager Golden Record whose design is reproduced on the back of the one-sided single.

#6) AYUMI HAMASAKI “Sunrise/Sunset ~Love Is All~” (Avex)
Two ways (uptempo and ballad) of saying the same thing, and both done very well.

#5) KODA KUMI “3 Splash” [EP] (Rhythm Zone/Avex)
Three sides of Kuu-chin in one handy single: Upbeat pop-rocker (“Lick me”), heavy techno in the vein of “Taboo” (“Ecstasy”), and a solid foray into funk-rock (“Hashire!”) – and all with PVs to go with it. Sold.

#4) MORNING MUSUME “Kimagure Princess” (Zetima)
The opening high-register vocals notwithstanding, after three rather emo singles a more upbeat number was the perfect track to close out both one of Morning Musume’s most triumphant years as well as Koharu Kusumi’s tenure in the band.

#3) AKB48 “Namida Surprise” (King)
In my opinion, the best of AKB48’s four single releases this year. It was definitely the most memorable, both for the title track and for the solo cut by Team K member Erena Ono, “First Kiss”.

#2) MORNING MUSUME “Shouganai Yume Oibito” (Zetima [Japan]/JapanFiles [US])
Referring to this particular period of Morning Musume’s singles as their “emo” period should not be interpreted as a putdown, because it isn’t. The fact that this single took Morning Musume back to the #1 spot on the singles chart in Japan shows that they were on the right track at the time; it’s definitely the standout of the three “emo” singles.

#1) BUONO! “My Boy” (Pony Canyon)
The guitar riffs in this song alone are insane – putting the sweet voices of Airi, Miyabi and Momoko makes it sound even more insane thanks to the seeming clash of elements, but it works, big time.

One band that my fiancee and I have witnessed a couple of times in concert was Evanesence, a band that we had found some common ground on early in our relationship. By the time we had witnessed the band live – once during their co-headlining stint on the 2007 Family Values Tour, later that year during their own headlining tour. But it wasn’t the same Evanescence that had recorded their breakthrough album Fallen or even their 2006 studio follow-up The Open Door. A year into touring behind Fallen, band co-founder and main composer Ben Moody left the group abruptly; weeks before Ev began their FVT stint, lead singer Amy Lee fired guitarist John LeCompt, leading drummer Rocky Gray to leave himself in disgust. While The Open Door was a decent album, the succeeding post-LeCompt/Gray tour was Evanesence in name only – it was really the Amy Lee Show, and the second of the two shows we witnessed that year was more memorable for Lee’s rather ridiculous stage outfit (which resembled a huge red Swiffer) than for the performance itself.

Since his departure, Moody busied himself with a variety of songwriting and producing jobs, while LeCompt and Gray collaborated in a band called Machina. That was until last Thursday when a USA Today article revealed that the three former Ev’s had reconvened with former American Idle (sorry, that’s how I always spell it here at TGML) contestant Carly Smithson. To make a long story short, a few rehearsals later, the new band – initially called just The Fallen until another band with that name cried fowl the day after the USA Today article decided to hit the ground running with a game plan meant to both satisfy hardcore fans of the collective’s previous projects and build/maintain interest in the band itself – a gradual releasing of recorded material every few weeks, interspersed with touring and eventually to a release of a physical album with some material not previously issued online.

The demand for the band’s first single proved to be overwheling to the band – so much so that copies of the mp3 single didn’t start to come out until Tuesday afternoon, almost 24 hours after the band opened up their site for signups.

Is it worth the wait and the hype? Yep. Comparisons to Fallen-era Evanescence are tempting to do, hard to avoid, and more than justified. After all, given that 3/5 of this band was also 3/5 of Evanescence when that band’s aforementioned breakthrough album was recorded and toured behind, it should be no surprise that We Are The Fallen sounds like that era of Ev. The reuniting of Moody with LeCompt and Gray reinforces who the actual creative force behind Evanescence was (Amy Lee’s version of the band on The Open Door notwithstanding), and Carly Smithson proves to be a more full-bodied vocalist with a wider range than Ms. Lee. To sum it up: Past recorded accomplishments notwithstanding, this is how Evanescence should have sounded in the first fucking place.