EVANESCENCE is currently recording its self-titled 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.

In a brand new interview with MTV News, EVANESCENCE vocalist Amy Lee states about the band's new material, "I can't give a good quote about it, because it's probably the heaviest record we've ever done, but we're having a great time making it. I don't want to say the word 'fun,' but it is ... it's totally fun. We're just going for it. So I don't want to say that it's 'expressing the pain of a thousand sorrows,' because it's not that. I mean, it's just more mature; it's just a great record. It's hard to sum it up."

According to Lee, the album's first single is a definite departure for the band. "It's really different for us," she says. "It doesn't sound like any EVANESCENCE track you've heard before. It's heavy, but the melodies and stuff, I feel like I just did what I wanted. I just literally sang what I wanted to sing, because it was fun and it kind of made me smile, and that ended up being the really fun, cool, catchy thing that got everybody hooked on it.

"There's a lot I want to get across all at once, before I lose anybody's attention. So, the song that I think is the first single is the song that wraps it all up. It's got a cool meaning, a lot of great lyrics going on, it also just smacks you right in the face and it's heavy and it's great ... I think that there's a couple songs that meet that same criteria."

Regarding the lyrical themes covered on the new EVANESCENCE album, Lee says, "There are themes of brokenness, the quest for freedom, and then there's songs that are just about falling in love ... it's just all over the place. There's this beautiful song that — it's definitely going to make the album, or I will kill someone — it's not like a single or anything, it's just this epic album track that's about loss from the perspective of someone losing someone in a tragedy, and it's really cool to listen back to that, too. That's not something I did on [2006's] 'The Open Door'. 'The Open Door' was all about me and my personal experiences. And there's some moments on this one that are actually taken from things that I watched go down, from my friends and stuff like that. But really, whatever makes me feel the most, that's what's on the record, because that's what I need to get off my chest."

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.

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.

-blabbermouth.net