3 Doors takes it down a notch

You’d think a band would be feeling pretty chipper after selling nearly 5 million copies of its debut album.

Not the Escatawpa, Miss., heavy-rock band 3 Doors Down. On “Away From the Sun,” the follow-up to 1999’s multi-platinum “The Better Life,” singer-lyricist Brad Arnold expresses his grand ennui with such regularity that one of the quintet’s “Better Life” hits, “Loser,” practically sounded celebratory by comparison when it rolled around Saturday at House of Blues in Anaheim, first stop on a new tour.

The new album is a virtually relentless exploration of bad vibes. Nearly every song offers some dour pronouncement on life -- and not in the existentially sad, spiritually cathartic or illuminating way that, say, Leonard Cohen does on his treks through the dark night of the soul. Instead, Arnold often comes off as if he’s grousing.

The newer material also misses the rhythmic jolt the band injected to mix things up on “The Better Life,” in particular the propulsive, double-time drumbeat of the breakthrough single “Kryptonite.” Fortunately, Arnold is a confident and charismatic, if not yet fully commanding frontman. His stage presence, along with the more varied songs from “The Better Life” woven into the 80-minute set, made the concert a richer way to experience this band.

Also from rock’s aggro camp was the opening act, Breaking Benjamin. Its set sounded almost wholly descended from Blue Oyster Cult’s “Don’t Fear the Reaper,” during which singer Ben Burnley delivered an uncanny impression of Jim Carrey fronting a rock band.