EVANESCENCE singer Amy Lee says that the band's long-awaited new album, "The Bitter Truth", will arrive this year.
The disc's first single, "Wasted On You", came out last month and is the first in a series of songs that the band will make available from "The Bitter Truth" incrementally, culminating in the release of the full album.
Asked in a new interview with Entertainment Tonight if there is an official release date for "The Bitter Truth", Amy said (see video below): "It's gonna be this year, but who knows when we can leave the house [to finish it, due to the COVID-19 lockdown]. So it's kind of those things where we have to wait to give you an official date, although I'd love to give you a date. I'm considering this is it — we're just releasing it one [song] at a time for a while until we eventally drop the rest of the album at the end of it at some point this year."
According to Lee, the band initially contemplated postponing the release of the new LP's first single, but quickly decided against it. "It just felt really wrong for how we are feeling," she explained. "We feel like more than ever we want to connect with people, with our fans. That's what live is — live is a direct connection. We're in the room, in the moment — you're getting to experience music and feel your feelings together — and that's what we're missing. And I know that our fans have been waiting for a new album from us for a really long time. And after all the bad news — there's just so much bad news this year, just in a row — it just felt the opposite of what I wanted to also be, like, 'Also, we're just gonna wait to put out music.' So you sit there and you have nothing. I think it's different for everybody.
"Obviously, we can't promote [the new music] like we would be able to if we weren't in this situation," she continued. "That's the big downside. We can't go and play 'Wasted On You' live right now — we're not on the late-night shows playing the song, or whatever it is that you do to be in person and get people to hear music. But I think for me personally, I am in a place where I need music right now — I am consuming music more than normal — and I usually kind of go by the idea that if I'm feeling something, if I'm doing something, I'm probably not the only person in the world who's like me. So we just did what felt right for us, which is we really, really, really wanted to make a connection. So through releasing a song, but also making that video, where we're really exposing ourselves by showing our real lives and our real homes and what we're doing in this quarantine that I know is so similar to a lot of people, it just felt really good to us, as humans, to be able to reach out and make a connection like that."
The video for "Wasted On You" was shot by each band member — Lee, bassist Tim McCord, drummer Will Hunt, lead guitarist Troy McLawhorn and guitarist Jen Majura — on their iPhones while currently in isolation at their homes.
In a separate interview with Music Week, Lee said that a handful of new EVANESCENCE songs are completed and mixed, and while they're "all different," she added, "I think so far the one thing that ties them together is it's going to a place that's even more raw."
Lee also told Music Week that EVANESCENCE wanted to get "back to rocking" following 2017's "Synthesis", an album that featured orchestral and electronic reworkings of old material plus two new tracks.
She explained: "I don't want to say our new album is stripped back, because it's not — it's big, powerful and luscious. But we haven't done any orchestra parts on any of the new songs, and that's not because we couldn't get together with one because of the pandemic!"
EVANESCENCE's new music is being produced by Nick Raskulinecz, who also worked on 2011's self-titled LP.
Photo credit: P.R. Brown
