AMY LEE Says EVANESCENCE Is Ready To Start Writing New Album

EVANESCENCE singer Amy Lee says that the band is about to begin working on its long-awaited follow-up to 2011's self-titled effort.

EVANESCENCE spent much of the last two years recording and touring in support of 2017's "Synthesis", which contained some of the band's best-loved songs — as well as a couple of new ones — reinvented with full orchestra over a deep electronic landscape.

EVANESCENCE has around two dozen live appearances scheduled this spring and summer, and Lee told Consequence Of Sound: "We're ready to start writing a new album now, and we really wanted to get back to our roots before going down that path. The orchestra thing was so beautiful and so different. It made us really grow in different directions and work in a way that was outside of all of our comfort zones until it got comfortable. But up was the new down. So, we wanted to get back to the heart and root of our sound as a band and start playing together to get in the mood for the next thing."

As far as the direction of the album, Lee says that the band is open minded right now. She explained: "We're definitely just feeling the camaraderie and brotherhood of each other being on tour together. We're all crammed into one bus with my son included, so it's a very family vibe out here. [Laughs] I'm literally sitting on three people’s backpacks in the back lounge."

She continued: "When we put together our live show, it really is a perfect intro into writing, because we do write. We write little bits and pieces. We created this really fun medley of our songs at rehearsals before this tour, because there are always songs that people on the Internet say, 'You never play this or that song.' There are reasons we don't play it live — it either doesn't work live or it's too slow or something else. So, I thought, what if we just make a Frankenstein of all the best parts of five of those songs? And it's our favorite thing to play every night."

"Synthesis" sold 34,000 equivalent album units in its first week of release to land at position No. 8 on the Billboard 200 chart. Of that sum, 30,000 were in traditional album sales. EVANESCENCE's 2011 self-titled release debuted at No. 1. "Synthesis" was the group's fourth top 10 effort, following "Evanescence", "The Open Door" (No. 1 in 2006) and "Fallen" (No. 3, 2003).

Last year, Lee told the 93.3 WMMR Rocks! radio station that she wasn't opposed to the idea of releasing singles and EPs instead of full-length albums, especially as streaming services like Spotify continue to alter the way people consume music.

"I just think it's cool to be able to have this freedom to commit to less and do more," she said. "I'm totally open to doing a few songs instead of an album here and there, and see what happens."

Photo credit: Paul Brown