Evanescence’s new album, Synthesis on Spotify!

November 15, 2017 By Justin No Comments

Listen and share Evanescence’s new album, Synthesis, on @Spotify! http://hyperurl.co/ev_spotify

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Amy Lee: I had to step away from being a rockstar

November 14, 2017 By Justin No Comments

When Evanescence unleashed Fallen in 2003, they inspired a generation. But for Amy Lee, it was the start of a decade-long struggle to control her own destiny

Amy Lee is in a playful mood. Despite talking to press all day, the Evanescence singer and gothic rock superstar is warm and chatty, anticipating our next question with a, “C’mon, what you got, whatcha got?” and giggling. “You’re my last in a looong block of interviews,” she tells us in her throaty, sing-song voice before we begin – but to her credit, it’s clear that when it comes to talking about Evanescence, she’s so fiercely proud of her band that she relishes the chance to set a few things straight.

Over 22 years, Evanescence have continued to defy expectation. From their humble, teenage beginnings in the 90s to the overwhelming breakthrough of Bring Me To Life, the song that became ubiquitous on every music channel for its iconic depiction of Amy Lee as a kind of gothic Rapunzel, to their new record Synthesis, an orchestral retrospective of their career, there’s a lot of ground to cover. Yes, with just three studio albums in 20 years, they’ve appeared to have some long breaks, but Amy is adamant that it’s all part of a process that’s allowed the band to continue.

“People are like, ‘Oh, so you’ve been hanging out and doing nothing for five years, how come?’” she says sardonically, referencing the last hiatus following their third, self-titled album, released in 2011. “It’s never like that! We toured for a year and a half, and then, you know, I had a baby, blah, blah, blah…” she trails off, laughing.

It quickly becomes apparent that she has a tendency to inject humour and gloss over some of the more personal aspects of her life, serving as another reminder that we’re talking to someone who at one time was a bona fide megastar, thrust into the limelight at 21. When she gets serious is when talking about her music, explaining the need for her latest break: “To make something you really mean, for me, means I have to go live my life for a while, figure out who I am again and have some experiences I need to get off my chest. I need to step away and not feel like a–” she hesitates before saying the next word – “a ‘rockstar’ any more. I need to go be Amy.”

“And it’s beautiful, because as much as I’ve been ready and willing to abandon it completely, it always leads me back to Evanescence,” she says with certainty. “I’m very proud, still – more than ever, even – of our oldest music. It’s not anything I’m ashamed of.” [Source]

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Watch the final episode of “Inside Synthesis”

November 13, 2017 By Justin No Comments

In the final episode of “Inside Synthesis”, peek into the process of making Amy Lee’s @SteinwayAndSons piano.

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Evanescence Find Orchestral Bliss With ‘Synthesis’ – Album Review

November 11, 2017 By Justin 1 Comment

Loudwire Review: Orchestras and rock/metal music have enjoyed a long and fruitful relationship. From entire genres like symphonic metal to collaborations such as Metallica’s S&M, Dream Theater’s Score and Deep Purple’s Concerto For Group and Orchestra, utilizing an orchestra can add a whole different dimension to a band’s sound.

Unlike many of these collaborations that are live albums, Evanescence’s Synthesis is a studio record consisting of orchestral versions of earlier material along with two new tracks. While a band like Metallica working with an orchestra might raise some eyebrows, it makes perfect sense for Evanescence. Their music is dramatic and dynamic, and they’ve utilized classical elements on previous albums.

Vocalist Amy Lee says, “These songs all have a life beyond the initial studio recordings, so it was really satisfying to go back and sing them as a 35-year-old as opposed to a 20-year-old (some of them). To be able to incorporate some of those elements that have developed over years of playing them live, and to show ways I’ve grown as well was a beautiful opportunity. I had to not only make each these new versions better in some way, but also preserve the core of what made the initial performance so great. I really challenged myself.”

As to the songs they selected to give the orchestral treatment, there are some of the hits from their three albums, but many are not. One I wish they would have done is “Going Under.” It’s interesting to hear “Bring Me to Life” as a classical track without the male rap parts. “My Immortal” and “Lost in Paradise” are a couple other of their well-known songs that are included in this set.

Some of the songs that work best in this format are lesser-known tracks like the heartfelt “Imaginary” from Fallen and The Open Door‘s “Lacrymosa,” which features a great performance from Lee that goes from reserved to all out belting. Her performance throughout is outstanding, with her powerful pipes never overshadowed by the orchestra.

The two new songs are the subdued “Hi-Lo” that features a guest appearance from violinist Lindsey Stirling and the album closer “Imperfection.” The latter has been released as a single, and its classical base has a lot of EDM and hip-hop influences.

Lee says, “’Imperfection’ is the most important song on the album for me. The song had to fit into our body of work, but at the same time, be a classic in its own right. When the lyrics started pouring out of me, I realized it was speaking to all those people we’ve been losing through depression and suicide. I sang it from the perspective of the person left behind. It’s a plea to fight for your life, and that we all need each other as humans.”

The production on the album (handled by Lee and Will Hunt) is excellent. It’s grandiose and bombastic in parts, quiet and subdued in others, and working with so many instruments when recording and mixing an album is tricky. Evanescence are currently on tour playing the album with an orchestra, and having had the chance to see them, this reviewer highly recommends checking it out. As dynamic and compelling as Synthesis is on record, it’s even more so live, especially with Lee’s charismatic performance. Read Full Review!

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Amy Lee Chats With Paste About Synthesis, Perform a Solo “Good Enough”

November 8, 2017 By Justin No Comments

Evanescence are back—again. Six years since their last album, 2011’s Evanescence, and 14 since their Grammy-winning breakthrough Fallen, the Southern gothic stalwarts are set to return with their most unusual project to date: Synthesis, an album featuring orchestral arrangements of some of their best-known and most-loved songs, with Amy Lee’s unmistakable voice out front as always.

Evanescence—now comprising Lee, drummer Will Hunt, guitarist/background vocalist Jen Majura, bassist Tim McCord and lead guitarist Troy McLawhorn—have always thrived on a deliciously dissonant sound, a potion of gothic imagery, metal guitars and pop craftsmanship that produced early hits like “My Immortal” (from 2000 demo Origin) and “Bring Me to Life,” the Fallen smash that would solidify the group’s signature recipe. The relationship between organic and electronic has always been at the core of Evanescence’s music, and on the sprawling Synthesis, Lee has brought it to its most dramatic form.

“That is the basic idea of the title of everything: Synthesis,” said Lee, who joined Paste at Steinway Hall in Manhattan recently for an exclusive listen to Synthesis, out Nov. 10. “Those two seemingly opposite things married together in a very beautiful way, where it’s not about contrast, but about them actually working together.”

The record will also include two new songs, “Hi-Lo” and “Imperfection.” Lee explained that the converging of old and new also echoes the project’s vision, noting, “That’s the other point of that word ‘synthesis’—past and present. Revisiting songs like ‘My Immortal,’ but in a place of now. Also, tying the new music into it and creating this thing that all flows together into one moment, but it’s actually going back and into the future.”

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Amy Lee on growing up, being cool, and sexuality in music

November 6, 2017 By Justin No Comments

Interview: For their next chapter, nu metal survivors Evanescence are orchestrating an ambitious reworking of their classics

In a world of generic warblers, the operatic swoop of Amy Lee’s vocal was the trump card behind Evanescence’s squillion-selling 2003 debut, Fallen. If this was a primal scream that spoke to the young, angsty and alienated, that’s probably because the Arkansas-born Lee was also a sensitive outsider who felt much of her audience’s pain. Fourteen years later we find Lee older, wiser, in a happier place and comfortable enough with her past to reinterpret the Evanescence catalogue with a full orchestra on their new album, Synthesis.

Synthesis revisits the old songs. Do you remember how it felt to be twenty years old and working on Fallen?

Unfortunately yes [laughs]. How would I describe myself back then? Wide-eyed, full of huge dreams, fairly insecure. But I think that’s pretty common. When we’re young we feel like we’re the only ones that kinda hate ourselves. I remember struggling with feeling like I didn’t deserve to be where I was. So definitely an emotional, hormonal moment. I still have a lot of big feelings, but it seems like the whole world is falling down around you sometimes when you’re a kid.

Didn’t being hugely successful make the problems go away?

No! Having lots of people all over the world touched by our music was a dream come true. But to have thousands, even millions, of people feel like they know you in an intimate way, it was difficult. I’m at a place in my life now where I think I’m pretty good at dealing with it. That whole thing, it’s not so scary any more. But it was scary in the beginning, for sure. [Source]

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Amy Lee in Music Week Interview

November 4, 2017 By Justin No Comments

Amy Lee spoke with Music Week about the music industry and Synthesis. Read what she said:

In the new issue of Music Week, we speak to Amy Lee about the return of multi-million selling rock phenomenon Evanescence and their highly-anticipated new album, Synthesis. Only their fourth studio release in 14 years, the record sees Evanescence – completed by bassist Tim McCord, drummer Will Hunt and guitarists Troy McLawhorn and Jen Majura – present new material alongside re-recordings of some of their most defining songs, all with orchestral accompaniment.

Lee told Music Week that while Synthesis explores the group’s latent orchestral potential with long-term collaborator David Campbell, it was also a chance to show how far their musical skills have developed.

“There’s a lot of musical skill that I personally didn’t have,” said Lee. “When we were writing Bring Me To Life I was 19! So just the musical ability that I had when I was 19 as a writer, as a singer, as an everything, I can do all that stuff better now because we’ve had all this time and experience. In addition, living inside those songs live for all these years, it just forever gives you ideas.”

Lee also opened up about the prospect of following the blockbusting success of her past, with Evanescence’s 2003 debut selling 1,324,026 copies to date in the UK according to Official Charts Company data.

“Fallen happened in the way that it happened,” Lee told Music Week. “You can’t even talk about record sales any more, it doesn’t mean anything but we kind of got set in a way that I was okay. We made some money and I always have poured that money into the next project. I have this ability to use that resource and the fanbase that we got from all those people who heard our music in the first place and cared about it enough to stick around. I can use that, I don’t have to start [a project] by going, ‘Help! I need to do a Kickstarter! I need to find a label!”

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Evanescence will be playing at the Foxwoods Resort Casino tonight!

November 4, 2017 By Justin No Comments

Evanescence will be playing at the Foxwoods Resort Casino tonight! Get your tickets! http://bit.ly/2ynzhGE! They will be live streaming the opening of the show TONIGHT right on their Facebook beginning at 8:45 PM EST!

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Evanescence gets the full force of an orchestra at Heinz Hall

November 3, 2017 By Justin No Comments

It only took a few songs to see just how humble Evanescence’s frontwoman Amy Lee truly is. After belting out a completely re-imagined version of “Bring Me to Life,” the 2003 Billboard nu metal hit from the band’s debut album “Fallen,” Ms. Lee took a deep breath and exhaled.

“Regaining composure,” she said, while sitting at the piano on stage at Heinz Hall on Monday night. As organic globular shapes floated in the background, she crooned some of the gentlest lines of the song. “Breathe into me and make me real,” she sung, before moving into a chaotic storm of a chorus, dramatized by a full orchestra rather than just electric guitars. The strings and brass complemented syncopated drumming before Ms. Lee finished the song.

The lights faded to black over her long, dark hair and billowing, floor-length black gown. Despite nearly a decade and a half of touring, the vocalist still deeply emoted while on stage, as if she were singing to herself in her own bedroom. As part of Evanescence’s Synthesis tour, previewing the band’s fourth album after a brief hiatus, the band played mostly past hits from their three existing albums, re-envisioning them for an orchestra.

What may have been as subjectively depressing as Green Day’s 2009 foray into opera was actually a delight — while Ms. Lee and her bandmates shared the stage with a 28-piece ensemble, her voice emerged as the most noteworthy instrument. It was enough to make you wonder whether she was a rock star or an opera star.

“It’s honestly one of my oldest dreams to play in the orchestra,” Ms. Lee said. “So thank you for giving me that opportunity.” In songs like “End of the Dream” and “Your Star,” the classical instruments were met with electronic beats and audibly alluring sound effects, including crackles, noises like chains dragging against the floor and some eerie effects that sounded nearly ghoulish. [Source]