After bringing you to life, Evanescence is bringing back the rock.

The Bitter Truth, the new album from Amy Lee and company, has finally arrived. It follows 2017’s Synthesis, which reinterpreted songs from the band’s catalog with orchestral and electronic elements, but is the first all-original Evanescence record since their 2011 self-titled effort.

Speaking with ABC Audio, Lee shares that she felt “really good” returning to Evanescence’s heavy roots.

“I knew I wanted the pendulum to swing back the other way, and we all did,” Lee explains. “There was already this plan for it to be, like…’Let’s make a rock album.’ Let’s go and make it, really the heart of it, about the band and about the heavy side.”

Evanescence experiments with some new sounds on The Bitter Truth — there’s the ’90s-alt feeling of “Wasted on You” and the dance-influenced “Yeah Right” — but the backbone of the record is that hard rock groove fans have been craving.

“A lot on the meat on the album is that, is rooted in — I don’t know how to really describe it — that driving, angst-ridden heaviness,” Lee says. “I know that the fans are gonna like that.”

The Bitter Truth also keeps Evanescence’s theatrical side intact with a flowing narrative that Lee describes as a “journey through grief.”

“We wanted to deliver all the epic pieces that make up who we are, and part of that is an album, not just a collection of songs,” Lee says.

“It kinda starts at ground zero of a tragedy, and then starts moving forward,” she continues. “The visual in my head is getting back up again, after the brokenness, after being slammed down into the ground.” 

The Bitter Truth is out today.

By Josh Johnson
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