It’s 2007, and Evanescence are opening for Iron Maiden on the main stage at Download festival. They’ve sold 14 million copies of their debut album, Fallen, while mega-hit Bring Me To Life made them such a cultural phenomenon that they beat rapper 50 Cent to a Best New Artist Grammy. And yet… there are heckles. There are boos. There are constant chants of “Maiden! Maiden! Maiden!”
“Look, I know I’m the only chick to be up here all day, and I know I’m one of the only ones to be singing any melodies. But that doesn’t mean we fucking suck!” she tells them, before piano ballad Lithium. “As far as I’m concerned, we fucking belong here!”
It wasn’t the first time Evanescence had played Download. In 2003, they’d drawn a young daytime crowd for their first ever UK show, while Metallica played a ‘secret’ set inside a tent across the field. But ultimately their sound and image clashed with traditional metal ideals, and for some metalheads, like those baying for Bruce and co, it was too much to take.
It would be a long time before Evanescence played Download again. But when they returned in 2023, they were greeted as heroes. Headlining the second stage, while the crowd spilled around corners and clambered on top of food trucks to get a view, Amy held the diehards and a whole new generation of converts in the palm of her hand, with the kind of steely self-confidence that can only come from being a genuine metal icon.
Afterwards, she jumped in a golf buggy and zipped over to the main stage to join headliners Bring Me The Horizon on their collab song, One Day The Only Butterflies Left…, and Nihilist Blues. The sets themselves were great and all, she says today over a Zoom call, but what really struck her was how much the festival had changed for the better.
“It felt so much more inclusive,” she recalls. “I wasn’t the only girl on the bill. They had a nail artist backstage!”
After 2023, surely they’ve been approached to headline it themselves?
“If I had been asked to headline it, I would’ve headlined it,” she says, before flashing a cheeky grin. “Maybe next year!”
Twenty-three years on from their first Download appearance, Evanescence are members of an increasingly exclusive pool of bands for whom an album release constitutes A Really Big Deal. That’s in no small part due to the fact they’ve only released four studio albums in that time.
Making music is definitely spiritual for me.
Amy Lee, Evanescence
There was 10 years between their 2011 self-titled release and their last studio album, 2021’s The Bitter Truth. Being an Evanescence fan requires patience. In that ‘downtime’, Amy scored two feature films (2014’s War Story and 2016’s Blind), released children’s album Dream Too Much and recorded a covers EP. Plus, the band released 2017’s Synthesis – an orchestral re-imagining of their biggest hits.
Of course, the anticipation is also due to Amy herself. A defining figure of the 2000s, who pretty much patented the sound of heavy guitars and piano, her instantly identifiable voice has influenced everyone from Paramore’s Hayley Williams to Halestorm’s Lzzy Hale, and she became a fashion icon to millions of alt girls in the hyper-sexualised, misogynistic climate of the time. Protecting the integrity of the art is something she’s stood her ground on since day one.
“It’s definitely a spiritual thing for me, making music,” she says today. “That’s why it takes years between albums, to really think it out and let things come the way that they’re supposed to come, instead of saying, ‘Well, we’ve got to put an album out, because of whatever commercial reason.’”
The singer is chatting to Hammer from the white-walled studio at her family home in Nashville, where she lives with her husband, therapist Josh Hartzler, and her 11-year-old son, Jack. It’s an airy, wide-open space, one side of the room lined with windows. Behind her is the door to another room, an electric drum kit visible beyond the threshold. A grey and white patterned rug covers most of the floor.
“It purposefully looks like it’s stained all over, so that no matter who spills a drink, we’re good,” she chortles. “It’s just part of the art.”
Evanescence are gearing up to release album number five, Sanctuary, on June 5. Having had exclusive access to a stream, we can confirm fans will be delighted. Blending cinematic melodrama, romance and industrial guitars with an overt electronic influence (courtesy of producer Jordan Fish, previously of Bring Me The Horizon, who worked alongside fellow producers Nick Raskulinecz and Zakk Cervini), it blends the familiar with new ideas, and is easily the heaviest they’ve sounded since Fallen.
It’s also Amy at her most self-assured and inspired. That’s reflected in our conversation today. Her distinctive voice and reputation for gothic gowns proceeds her; you half expect her to float into view, an ethereal sylph trailed by wisps of lace. On the contrary, the singer is friendly and down-to-earth, albeit tough. She’ll only answer the questions she wants to answer, sometimes talking around answers, setting firm but polite boundaries.
How do you say, ‘Everything is fucked’ without saying everything is fucked?
Amy Lee
Leaning comfortably back in her chair, sipping from a large tumbler, her glossy black hair tumbling over the shoulders of a loose t-shirt, she tells us, “I feel very fulfilled right now. If I think of something that I want to do, we’re gonna try it, and most of the time it works out. I’m so excited for this album to come out.
“I think they’re the best lyrics I’ve written, and I think part of that has to do with perspective and being here after all this time, but also when things start flooding out, you have to catch them…”
As we speak, she’s distracted by Jack, who appears outside the window. He accompanied Amy when Evanescence supported Metallica on the Australia and New Zealand leg of their M72 World Tour in November 2025. Has he twigged yet exactly who his mum is?
“Yeah, it’s starting to hit him in a new way,” she smiles.
He’s old enough now, she beams, to be catching the metal bug himself.
“First of all, to see his mom get up there… so proud,” she says. “But to see Metallica with the pyro, with the fireworks, the 80,000 people… I watched him get inspired in a way that I will have in my heart forever.”
(Image credit: Travis Shinn)
There’s only been a five-year gap between albums this time around, positively supersonic for Evanescence. The band started writing in 2022 and recording in 2023, slowly building ideas and letting them grow.
By this point, you’ll have most likely heard Sanctuary’s lead single, Who Will You Follow, which contains the line: ‘When all your faith in reality fades away / Who will you follow then?’ among haunting piano and a nasty riff. It’s a fitting introduction for an album Amy explains is “coming from a place of righteous rage”.
“I mean, how do I say that everything is fucked without, like, just saying everything is fucked?” she says. “We’re in our screens more than ever. The people that run the media have a vested interest in what you believe.”
She called the album ‘Sanctuary’ because the music represents a place of safety and truth at “a chaotic and violent time where more and more it feels like things are spiralling out of control”.
Amy had always kept her political views private, until 2020, when on February 6, the day US President Donald Trump was found not guilty on charges of impeachment, she tweeted: “I can’t stand by and keep my mouth shut when my country’s freedom is taken away.”
A year later, the band’s 2021’s album, The Bitter Truth, buzzed with political sentiment, while she was photographed at the anti-Trump No Kings protests in both 2025 and 2026. Why was then the right time to speak out?
“Well, before that, I didn’t feel like it was so pressing in from every side. It’s inescapable now,” she considers. “When I was in my 20s and we were doing Fallen, [the music] was very introverted because I was focused on looking in. As you go through life and you have experience, you have to look out.”
I hope that our album fuels people. I hope that it gives people inspiration and puts some light out there
Amy Lee
Amy prefers to leave her lyrics open to interpretation, glossing over direct questions about themes and stating that, on Sanctuary, the lyrics “are all over the place”. One track on the album – she doesn’t say which – is about a relationship, inspired by the Fallen days.
She doesn’t reveal who it’s about, but does confirm it’s not about Seether’s Shaun Morgan, the subject of 2006 single Call Me When You’re Sober. She was inspired to write it while sifting through old Fallen memories.
“I was going through old audio from my handheld recorder and old footage. It put my heart in a place I hadn’t been in a while, and brought up some old things. It’s not like the album is about that, but there is a space for it where we go there.”
Meanwhile, the crunchy and direct Tell Me When You’ve Had Enough, which repeatedly asks ‘Where’s the light?’, and About Us, which taunts, ‘This is what you wanted right? … Now bow down to your God / You know he doesn’t give a damn about us…’ ripple with frustration and anxiety.
“Motivating people and telling people to get out there and vote; I did that real hard,” she says of the 2024 election. “I’m starting to wonder if that is going to be an option next time.”
She doesn’t want fans to come away from Sanctuary feeling hopeless, though. Album closer Wide Open Heart feels like a deep breath after being underwater. ‘You can’t kill real love / That’s the one thing they can’t touch.’
“I’m in a rock band!” Amy exclaims. “I’m gonna make the best music that I can, with the most inspiring message that I can… I hope that our album fuels people. I hope that it gives people inspiration and puts some light out there.”
When Evanescence broke through in 2003 with the world-changing juggernaut Bring Me To Life, their success was vast and immediate. At the time, nu metal, which had been the dominant sound in heavy music during the last half-decade, was losing its grip on the mainstream, but the band’s label, Wind-up Records, still insisted the track needed a male rapper if it stood a chance of being a hit.
Jordan Fish and I just get each other.
Amy Lee
Amy had argued against the move, but the label got their way; rapper Paul McCoy, from little-known band 12 Stones, was drafted in. And while Amy has been publicly critical about the creative choice, her stance has since mellowed, and she even performed the song with Paul at 2025’s Louder Than Life festival in Louisville, Kentucky.
“I was so worried about the first song being a collab, because I wanted people to understand us, and I was so worried the first look would be confusing,” she says.
“But all those things that worried me are all cool perks now. We have a built-in part to sing with people live when we go and do a festival. It’s this extra-special moment in the night where we get to do our thing and share nostalgia with fans, but then also include other people.”
Bring Me To Life saw the band categorised as both nu metal and goth, two genres they are still associated with today – but Amy never identified with either.
“Honestly, I never liked that word,” she says of the latter. “I was like an alt rock, ripped-up jeans kind of girl. The word goth [to describe our music] is stupid. I hate that word.”
“I don’t think that word is particularly modern, but I don’t really care,” she says of nu metal. “Labels are labels, whatever you want to call it, is fine. We know who we are, and where we’ve come to is full of so much amazing growth, but it’s also full of, like, respecting where we came from. So you get to hear it all together on this whole album.”
It’s not escaped her, though, that Y2K trends in general are having a resurgence, with artists from across both the commercial and alternative spectrum taking the fashion and downtuned sound of the 90s and 2000s in new directions. She’s glad Evanescence are part of the conversation.
“I think it’s natural, at this sort of 20-year mark, for throwback vibes and nostalgia to hit,” she muses. “There is so much interesting innovation in rock and metal today, it has come so far from where it was back then… the rules are out the window.”
On Evanescence’s second album, 2006’s The Open Door, Amy took full creative control. A more dramatic, atmospheric collection of songs, it’s stood the test of time and she was proud of it, but it sold a fraction of Fallen. Did she have trust issues after Bring Me To Life?
“Oh, yes, yes. Definitely, but also I think just the insecurity of being younger and thinking about what people think more than I wanted to, because that’s how it is when you’re younger,” she says, adding that in this latest era, she feels “more open” to working with other artists and producers, being “comfortable with myself enough to try things instead of being so precious”.
What’s behind this, she says, is her symbiotic relationship with Jordan Fish, whom she first met at Download in 2023.
“When you find somebody that you’re so in tune with creatively, and you know what you’re doing and you get each other, it’s… I don’t want to say the word ‘easy’, because it was a lot of work, but it feels easy. Jordan and I just get each other.”
In 2025 the collaborations continued, with Evanescence on a huge upswing. In May, Amy recorded two songs for the soundtrack of John Wick action spin-off Ballerina: Hand That Feeds, with popstar Halsey (produced by Jordan), and Fight Like A Girl, which featured rapper K.Flay (produced by producer and film score composer Tyler Bates).
Female empowerment is what drew her to Ballerina – not just the ass-kicking heroine part of it, but what the songtitle Fight Like A Girl represents.
The idea behind End Of You was to show our unity.
Amy Lee
It’s easy to draw parallels with her own journey through music, grappling with the inherent sexism of the metal scene. When Evanescence co-founder Ben Moody acrimoniously left the band in 2003, she was blamed and branded a diva by the media.
“It’s a line in the movie when the trainer is telling the main character [assassin Eve Macarro] how to get it done,” she explains of the context for Fight Like A Girl. “Because it’s not just about physical force. [Men are] always gonna have that advantage on you. They’re bigger than you. But you can be clever. You can get in there, fight dirty, do what it takes. Stay the test of time, wait it out.”
In September 2025, she teamed up with Spiritbox vocalist Courtney LaPlante and Poppy for the incendiary single End Of You. Produced again by Jordan Fish, it felt like a pivotal moment for metal: three female artists, each coming at heavy music from different angles, bringing their own individual vibe to the track, singing about liberation from toxic relationships. It felt powerful, a moment that perfectly summed up the progressive nature of modern metal.
“Yeah, that was the idea,” Amy nods. “To show our unity, you know? One thing I love about them both is how fearlessly they embrace their femininity within such heavy music. It’s beautifully rebellious. I mean, we all have different styles and different outfits, blah, blah, blah, but we’re here for the music.
“I love Courtney. We had a blast working together,” she adds. “And then, Poppy’s great too. I’ve gotten to know her more through this process. She kind of plays a character when she’s on, but she’s a very cool person in real life.”
End Of You came together remotely, with the three artists sharing ideas online after Poppy and Jordan visited Amy in Nashville. They sat on the patterned rug in her studio in a circle and “hammered a bunch of stuff out”, with Amy laying down her vocals then and there. She was energised by the collaborative nature of the session, an indication of how much her mindset has changed from the earlier Evanescence days.
“Just getting inspired by other people’s minds and spirits, and letting them in as much as you’re taking them in, is so good,” she smiles.
Working with other female artists in recent years, she says, has been a deliberate choice. Building a community of women around her is important – something she never had in the early days when diversity was scarce and she was often the only woman on a bill.
In June, Evanescence will go on a world tour with a line-up of female artists – Spiritbox, Poppy, Nova Twins and K.Flay – in tow. It’ll be an opportunity for the band to celebrate their present and future, as well as their substantial legacy.
Fallen celebrated its 20-year anniversary in 2023. We point out that a song like Bring Me To Life is a rare thing, a song with almost mythical status that everyone seems to have an almost embryonic connection to, and that continues to resonate.
“How I feel about that song is grateful,” she says. “I can’t credit it to any particular one thing or an equation that you could follow. I think it’s a combination of a whole bunch of things; the time that it happened, everything falling into place at the right time.”
Just as it is for anyone else, she says, untangling herself from the court of public opinion has been a “struggle”. She never looks at comments on social media.
“I post and I’m gone. I love our fans and ability to talk directly to them, but I don’t sit there and go through comments. That’s a faceless entity judging you.”
No doubt misogyny played a part in that hostile reception at Download in 2007. But while Evanescence have long silenced the hecklers, there’s no way in hell the Amy Lee sitting in front of us would give them the time of day anyway.
“You can’t base your actions on how you’re judged,” she says, her head held high. “Be you and be confident in that. It doesn’t mean being a bitch. It means you’re not one. If you know that your heart is true, and you’re doing your best, then that’s it… mic drop.”
Sanctuary is out now via Music For Nations/Columbia/Sony. Evanescence tour the UK with Poppy and K. Flay in September.
