Evanescence's 'The Other Side'

MTV News previews a second song from band's hotly anticipated new album.
By James Montgomery

Last week, Evanescence invited MTV News down to Nashville to talk about their much-anticipated new album and play us a handful of tracks from the disc, which hits stores October 11.  

On Monday, we gave you an exclusive preview of "What You Want," the album's roaring first single. Now, we're about to pull the curtain back on another song, "The Other Side," a booming track that gives credence to frontwoman Amy Lee's claim that Ev's new effort is "the heaviest record" they've ever made.

A thunderous mix of double-bass drums, churning, chunky guitars and, of course, Lee's ethereal, widescreen vocals, "The Other Side" is the kind of song that starts big and only gets bigger, culminating in a chorus that's powerful enough to be measured in megatons. Like "What You Want," it's an aggressive track, but, as Lee pointed out, it may also be the best example of what she'd previously described as "fun." There's an elastic groove to the playing, a looseness that only comes from a band letting it all hang out.

"There's this element, this thing that we're doing that I can't really describe. We're just going to have to release the record and create an adjective [for it]," she laughed. "It's just ... 'musicianship.' We're enjoying playing, and the way that I'm singing, the way that I'm writing my vocals, it's not about the most dramatic expression of pain, it's like, 'I'm singing this because it feels really good to sing the melody that way.' And I think that song has both. It's beautiful and epic, but at the same time it's got that rocking vibe."

And in keeping with the overall theme of the album, "The Other Side" is very much a band song (there's a reason they're calling the new album simply Evanescence), the result of Lee working — and reworking — the track with her bandmates and producer Nick Raskulinecz. And while that process makes the song a definite departure for Evanescence, its subject matter — namely, death — is something Lee has been dealing with for years. Though, as is the case with pretty much everything on the new album, for the first time, she's tackling it in a different way.

"I wrote it with the guys. It was real collaborative. That was a hard one for me to write the lyrics for, because I had the chorus — it's very epic and dramatic; 'Counting the days to meet you on the other side' — but then, the verses, again, that element of fun is coming back in, you know, the band, it's grooving," Lee explained. "So I'm like, 'How do I sing about death in a way that's sort of bitchy?' Like, it's not really possible ... it's hard to explain. But it's harder than it sounds."

Source: MTV News