EVANESCENCE Singer Says New Album Is Much More Of A Band Collaboration

EVANESCENCE is currently recording its third album at a Nashville studio with producer Nick Raskulinecz (RUSH, FOO FIGHTERS, VELVET REVOLVER, DEATH ANGEL, TRIVIUM) for a tentative October 4 release via Wind-up Records.

"The process has been much more of a collaboration between the whole band," singer Amy Lee tells Billboard.com. "Usually it's me and one main co-writer...This time everybody had something to do with it from the ground up." Consequently, the music has "a lot more about a live feeling about the band. The way everyone is playing strong, it's like we've been playing the songs on tour for a year."

Lee began recording an album last year with producer Steve Lillywhite (DAVE MATTHEWS BAND, U2) that leaned heavily in the direction of electronic and dance music, but her label reportedly rejected that project and made her start from scratch on a more traditional EVANESCENCE offering.

"I've come to realize now I was making like a solo record, and if it was going to be an EVANESCENCE record, we needed to come together and make it like a band," Lee tells Billboard.com. "That was a hard time for me. I thought I knew what I wanted and it sort of didn't happen like I wanted it to...But I have to say I feel so strong about what we're doing now...We still have some of the same songs from those sessions but we've made them about the band."

Guitarist Troy McLawhorn recently officially rejoined EVANESCENCE after leaving SEETHER in March. McLawhorn first joined EVANESCENCE in 2007 but left a year later and was hired by SEETHER. He quit that group three months ago, claiming "personal friction" with one of the band members, with SEETHER frontman Shaun Morgan saying at the time that McLawhorn was returning to EVANESCENCE.

EVANESCENCE's management denied that McLawhorn was coming back, but he announced it on June 14 at his Facebook page.

Shortly after Troy's exit from SEETHER, Shaun Morgan gave The Pulse Of Radio his version of why McLawhorn split. "He just didn't want to be here anymore, man, and I'm not the kind of person that's gonna beg somebody to stay," he said. "I'm not gonna try and make somebody do something they don't want to do and I'm certainly not gonna try and make somebody try and have a good time with me when they've obviously made up their mind that that's not what they want to do."

There has been bad blood between the SEETHER and EVANESCENCE camps since Lee and Morgan ended a romantic relationship in late 2005.

The new EVANESCENCE album comes five years after the band's last effort, 2006's "The Open Door".