With so many artists vying for the spotlight these days, constantly looking to reinvent themselves, one-up themselves with every album and video they pump out, staying on the road for years at a time to get their music heard and to remain viable as band, indulging in a 5-year hiatus while cresting the charts sounds like career suicide. But not so for Evanescence, whose legions of fans have been holding the faith all these many years, anxiously awaiting their return.
And come back they have. The Grammy-winning rock band's third album, the eponymous Evanescence, is set for release on October 11. It's the group's first album since The Open Door in 2006 and features the lineup of Amy Lee (vocals, keyboards, harp), Terry Balsamo (lead guitar), Troy McLawhorn (rhythm guitar), Tim McCord (bass), and Will Hunt (drums).
An admitted perfectionist, Lee sheepishly confesses that it took the band two tries to get the album right. They got off to a false start back in 2009 when she first announced that Evanescence would release an album sometime in 2010, but when things hit a snag during the recording sessions, the project was scrapped. For Lee, it then became a question of starting all over again from scratch or ending things permanently and blending back into the canvas of everyday life.
But the goth-rock outfit from Little Rock, Arkansas, is in her blood. She founded Evanescence along with Ben Moody, former lead guitarist and songwriter for the band and Lee's ex-boyfriend. Moody was in a Christian praise and worship band when he first met Lee at a church youth camp in 1994 and heard her playing Meat Loaf's "I'd Do Anything for Love (But I Won't Do That)." The two bonded over a shared love of Jimi Hendrix and Björk, and while still in their teens, began writing Christian-themed songs with titles like "Solitude," "Give Unto Me," "Understanding," and "My Immortal." Amy, who had spent her youth studying classical piano, had one foot in the classical music genre and the other in heavy metal. "Both genres are intricate, complex types of music that are very dramatic," she says, "and I'm naturally drawn to that." Lee—sporting ghoulish make-up and a pierced eyebrow and dressed in Victorian-style clothing, corsets, and fishnet—and Moody carved their fledgling band’s identity out of a curious mix of rock, goth and classical music.
For some time the duo were unable to perform live because they couldn't find other musicians to play with and didn't have the funds to pay for professional assistance. All that changed, however, when "Understanding" broke on the local music charts and they suddenly found themselves in demand. Lee and Moody recruited their friends Rocky Gray and Matt Outlaw on drums and Will Boyd on bass and considered various names such as Childish Intentions and Stricken before settling on Evanescence (not to be confused with Effervescence), which means to disappear or fade away. When the band finally did make a live appearance, they became one of the most popular acts in the area.
Evanescence released three EPs, which are hard to find these days and highly coveted by collectors: the self-titled Evanescence (1998), of which about 100 copies were made and distributed at the band's early live performances; Sound Asleep, also known as the Whisper EP (1999); and Mystery, sometimes spelled Mystary (2003). The band's first full-length CD, Origin (2000), had a limited number of copies produced that were sold to their concert audiences. Like the EPs, it contained demo versions of some of the songs that would eventually make it onto their debut album.
Lee told the BBC that the band were mastering demos in Memphis, Tennessee, when they were discovered by producer Pete Matthews, who shopped their songs to record companies in New York. Evanescence eventually landed a contract with Wind-up Records, home of Creed and 12 Stones, bands with similar spiritual leanings. By the time they released Fallen in March 2003, the group had jelled around a lineup that included Lee on piano and vocals, Moody on lead guitar, John LeCompt on rhythm guitar, Rocky Gray on drums, and Will Boyd on bass.
Evanescence's breakthrough came when the single "Bring Me to Life," which featured guest vocals by 12 Stones singer Paul McCoy, appeared on the soundtrack to the 2003 Ben Affleck action movie Daredevil. The song blew up and helped to drive Fallen to the top of both the Christian and secular charts. Wind-up's initial marketing plan had included a push to Christian music fans, but shortly after the album's release, Lee and Moody renounced their association with Christian music in an interview with Entertainment Weekly that included profanity. It riled the band's Christian fans, and Wind-up immediately posted an apologetic letter on the Christian Music Central Website announcing that band members' statements made it clear they considered Evanescence a secular band. Fallen was promptly pulled from Christian retail outlets everywhere.
The brouhaha, however, had no affect whatsoever on album sales. Fallen became a huge success, reaching #1 on Billboard's Top Contemporary Christian chart and #3 on the Billboard 200. Hit singles like "Bring Me to Life," "Going Under," and "My Immortal" kept Fallen on the Billboard Top 10 for 43 weeks. The album was certified 7x Platinum and has sold more than 15 million copies worldwide. It earned Evanescence two Grammys including Best New Artist and Best Hard Rock Performance.
And then in October 2003, seven months after the release of Fallen, Ben Moody abruptly left the band in the middle of a European tour. The reasons for his departure remain somewhat vague, but creative differences are often blamed for the acrimonious parting of ways between him and Amy. In an interview several months later, Lee said, "We'd gotten to a point that if something didn't change, we wouldn't have been able to make a second record." Since then, she has expressed relief that he left because of tensions created within the band. Lee, to this day, has not spoken to Moody.
Evanescence continued to tour nonstop for the next year with Terry Balsamo, from the Florida-based metal band Cold, tapped as Moody’s replacement. In 2004, the band released the live album, Anywhere but Home, which reached #39 on the Billboard 200. If it wasn't already clear that Lee was the focal point of the band, the October 2006 release of The Open Door established her dominance once and for all. The album shot to #1 on the Billboard 200 and produced another Top 10 single, "Call Me When You're Sober," written about Lee's post-Moody relationship with Seether singer Shaun Morgan. Shortly before The Open Door's release, bassist Will Boyd left and was replaced by Tim McCord of the California metal band Revolution Smile. Six months after the album came out, guitarist John LeCompt announced that Lee had fired him via cell phone and that drummer Rocky Gray had also decided to leave the band. Lee replaced the two musicians, who had been with Evanescence since their Little Rock days, with drummer Will Hunt and guitarist Troy McLawhorn, both of the metal band Dark New Day. That lineup toured through late 2007 before Amy—after a decade of multi-platinum sales and never-ending drama, both onstage and off—decided to take an indefinite hiatus and explore life as an Average Jane.
"My entire adult life, until a couple years ago, was all about [Evanescence]," she told MTV News. "When I just turned 18, I got signed. I quit college, and we just moved into a house together and just started cramming to do whatever we needed to do to make it. And then we went to L.A., and the label had us up there doing artist development for a couple years, and then we were on tour and it went big fast, and then right after touring behind Fallen, we started writing again right away.” Lee told her bandmates that she needed a break. “I just wanted to be a normal person for a minute, before I was 50 years old. I didn't want to think about the next thing for as long as it took."
Lee, who had moved to New York just before getting married near the end of the band's last tour, says she's spent much of the intervening time just being a wife and, "trying to find myself again as a human. The whole fame, celebrity, center-of-attention-all-the-time thing, it’s not completely me. I’d rather be somebody’s friend and just be normal for a little bit. I needed to buy my own groceries for a little bit and not have a car and just be like every other New Yorker. Just me being me again, without the Evanescence part." And, yes, she enjoyed every minute of it.
All it took to lure her back, however, was a single show with the band—a 2009 warm-up gig for a headlining spot at the Maquinária Festival in Brazil—to remind Lee of just how much she missed her former life. "I had to get back together with all the guys,” she says. “We practiced all the old stuff, got a set together.” Lee enjoyed it so much she suggested they make a record.
Evanescence entered a New York recording studio in February 2010 with producer Steve Lillywhite (U2, Rolling Stones). The band began making an album that leaned heavily in the direction of electronic and dance music, but when her label reportedly rejected the project and made her start from scratch on a more traditional Evanescence offering, Lee stopped the sessions and questioned whether or not to go on at all. "It wasn't coming together right," Lee says. "Steve wasn't the right fit. We were on this experimental trip, trying a bunch of new things, seeing what would fit. I did a lot of the writing without the band. I've come to realize now I was making a solo record, and if it was going to be an Evanescence record, we needed to come together and make it like a band."
Evanescence was ultimately recorded at Nashville’s Blackbird Studio with producer Nick Raskulinecz (Rush, Foo Fighters, Alice in Chains). The self-titled album is both a statement of their reemergence as a band and an expression of Lee’s love for Evanescence, something she's obsessed over for more than a decade. She describes the latest collection of songs as "epic, dark, big and beautiful." Lee even managed to find some ways to incorporate her hiatus into the album, making her recording debut on the harp, which she took up after her husband bought her the instrument as a gift.
Lee calls Evanescence a personal journey. “It takes you on an emotional ride. It takes you to a lot of different places emotionally. It makes me feel really happy because even though there are songs that are desperate, that desperation was turned into something beautiful and productive and great. I took that pain and made something out of it by using music as an outlet. I’m moving on with my life,” she says, “being productive instead of sitting around in a rut.”
Evanescence are hitting the road again after a 4-year absence from the concert stage. The band played their first show in almost two years on August 17 at War Memorial Auditorium in Nashville, Tennessee. They performed four songs from the new album including "What You Want," which was released back in August as the record's lead-off single. The band will support Evanescence with a 15-city North American run that kicks off on October 10 in Oakland, California. Other dates include:
October 11: Los Angeles, California (Palladium)
October 14: Phoenix, Arizona (Comerica Theatre)
October 19: Dallas, Texas (Palladium)
October 21: Milwaukee, Wisconsin (Eagles Ballroom)
October 22: Chicago, Illinois (Congress Theatre)
October 24: Detroit, Michigan (Royal Oak Music Theatre)
October 25: Toronto, Ontario (The Sound Academy)
October 27: Montreal, Ontario (Metropolis)
October 28: Boston, Massachusetts (Palladium)
October 30: Atlantic City, New Jersey (Showboat - House of Blues)
November 1: New York, New York (Terminal 5)
Upcoming European dates include:
November 4: London, UK
November 7: Manchester, UK
November 8: Glasgow, UK
November 10: Plymouth, UK
November 12: Leeds, UK
November 13: Birmingham, UK
November 17: Offenbach, Germany
November 18: Dusseldorf, Germany
November 20: Berlin, Germany
November 21: Munich, Germany
For further information on Evanescence, as well as word on any future concert dates, check out the band's website at www.evanescence.com.
