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 Amy Lee and Evanescence kick off their fall tour with a gig Thursday at the Kool Haus. |
Today, Evanescence releases its second album, The Open Door.
That's a small miracle, of sorts, given what the band has been through the past few years.
Guitarist Terry Balsamo suffered a stroke last October. Bassist Will Boyd left the band. Frontwoman Amy Lee has been embattled in a messy lawsuit that accuses the band's former manager of sexual misconduct, and she also has been slugging through a diffcult romantic breakup.
What seems to have affected Lee the most, though, is the sudden departure of Evanescence's cofounder -- guitarist/songwriter and former boyfriend Ben Moody, someone she calls "toxic."
Canoe Live: How much longer before Amy Lee leaves Evanescence and goes solo? Have your say here
"Ben leaving the band was a really good thing, actually, because I felt like the band was going to die if he stayed in it," Lee said last week in an interview at a downtown Toronto hotel.
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"We overcame the challenge of him leaving in the middle of the tour and we became closer as a band. Ben and I were always butting heads and there was always a fight. It just got to the point where he hated the band, he hated being on tour and his negativity made everyone around him miserable. He was trying to pull the whole ship down with him.
" Lee says she refused to let that happen. With Moody's departure, she has regained a creative freedom she lost somewhere along the way.
"At one point, all my pianoplaying rights were stripped away from me because Ben felt like I was getting too much attention, so we hired a keyboard player," Lee said. "But now, on the new album, it's my turn to be the main writer and piano player again.
"I really wanted to make it better than ever, and for me that means incorporating a lot of my natural, classical influence into the music. The writing of this record was the best process of my life because I had free reign. I could do whatever I wanted without being judged or being told it's stupid."
Lee says overcoming all of the "negative challenges" the band has had to endure has led them to record what she sees as their best work yet.
But what about the dreaded second album curse? The group sold 14 million copies worldwide of their Grammy-winning major label debut, Fallen. That's a lot to live up to.
"I'm not afraid at all -- I love the new album," Lee said. "I feel like it's deffnitely the best thing I've ever been a part of. No matter what happens with the public, it will still be the perfect album to me, and that's the real truth. It sounds pretentious, but I really don't care. I know we're going to sell a few albums, but as far as trying to sell as many albums as the first album, I think that's impossible. And there's no reason to try because it's not about record sales, it's about the music."
Evanescence kick offs a fall tour Thursday night at Toronto's Kool Haus.