EVANESCENCE frontwoman Amy Lee tells MTV News that she has just recorded her first score with composer Dave Eggar for the indie film "War Story", which will premiere later this month at Sundance.
"It's going to surprise my fans. It's not what you'd expect; the film is very dark, very introspective. There's not even a lot of dialogue, which is great, because to me it makes this beautiful, sad platform for music," Lee says. "There's a lot of blending of sounds, a lot of ominous tones. I play a lot of keyboard, and a lot of Taurus pedal. There's a lot of low drones.
"There are moments of playing, and it's musical, but there are a lot of moments where Dave and I just built walls of sounds, out of blaring cellos and trombones and synthesizers and harp, all on top of each other," she continues. "Sort of creating new sounds. It's not, like, a soundtrack. it's an atmosphere."
Lee also says that the experience of scoring a film is one she hopes to replicate again very soon.
"I've been talking about wanting to score forever, and this was my first opportunity to explore that," she says. "Dave and I were already talking about taking a meeting for another film, and I definitely want to work with him again. I'm open-minded. I really like to be in a free place where I'm not boxing myself in; I say that all the time, but that's the goal right now."
Lee is reportedly suing her longtime label, Wind-Up Records, for at least $1.5 million over unpaid royalties and other alleged misdeeds, according to TMZ.com. Lee has also alleged in her lawsuit that the company attempted to sabotage the band's career by assigning them to under-qualified promotion executives who lacked fresh ideas on how to market and promote the group.
Asked by MTV News about the lawsuit, Lee said: "I can't say a word, I'm sorry. It's really for the best right now."
TMZ.com did not cite its sources for the report, nor did it obtain any official statements from either the label or Lee, who is seeking over $1.5 million in back royalties.
EVANESCENCE is actually no longer part of the Wind-Up roster. Back in November, Wind-Up sold most of its back catalog to the Bicycle Music Company and Concord Music Group, including the entire catalogs of EVANESCENCE, CREED, SEETHER and others.
EVANESCENCE, whose third, self-titled album debuted at No. 1 on The Billboard 200 when it came out in 2011, has sold 25 million records worldwide.
That last disc came out after a five-year hiatus and Lee told The Pulse Of Radio at the time that she wasn't even sure if she wanted to keep on making rock music. "For me, it had really been such a long time for us coming back after, you know, five years or four years of not doing it, living normal life and not even thinking about EVANESCENCE for a lot of that time, it starts to feel like, is this really still me?" she said. "You know, have I outgrown this thing? Is this going to work anymore? You know. Who am I? [laughs]"
The band toured through mid-2012 in support of the CD, but has been inactive since then.
The first of four videos on the making of "The Satanist", the long-awaited new album from Polish extreme metallers BEHEMOTH, can be seen below.
"The Satanist" will be released on February 3 in the U.K., February 4 in North America and Poland, February 5 in Japan, and February 7 in the rest of the world. Pre-order bundles, include: CD, LP, t-shirt, as well as the deluxe box set, and are available at metalblade.com/behemoth in North America, nuclearblast.de/behemoth in Europe, and on behemoth-store.com (digibook and box).
BEHEMOTH's video for the new single "Blow Your Trumpets Gabriel" can be seen below. This visual masterpiece was produced by Grupa 13 and is one of BEHEMOTH's most unsettling and unique works to date.
BEHEMOTH frontman Adam "Nergal" Darski states about the video: "Yes, we took all the time in the world to complete this project. And we did everything that was humanely possible to accurately express our vision. We crossed the Rubicon.
"'Blow Your Trumpets Gabriel' is an ecstatic manifest of our unrestrained artistic will, where we dare to reach out beyond the limitations of the heavy metal genre. And it's only the beginning."
"The Satanist" deluxe box, which is available in North America as an European import, includes: CD/DVD digibook in silver mirror slipcase with a high-quality 44-page booklet (with gold foil, UV gloss lamination), supersize poster flag (approx. 3.5' x 5'), wooden black inverted rosary cross, metal pin, black envelope with black communion wafers. The DVD, "Live Barbarossa", includes a professionally filmed show in Ekaterinburg, Russia, as well as 30-minute documentary about the creative process behind "The Satanist".
"The Satanist" was produced by BEHEMOTH, Wojtek and Slawek Wieslawscy and Daniel Bergstrand at Hertz Studio. The CD was mixed by Matt Hyde (SLAYER) and mastered by Ted Jensen (METALLICA, AC/DC) at Sterling Sound in New York City. The cover art for "The Satanist" was painted by renowned Russian painter and occultist Denis Forkas. The paint used included some of Nergal's own blood. Additional art and design was completed by Metastazis (PARADISE LOST) and Zbigniew Bielak (WATAIN, GHOST).
"I wanted to incorporate some of my DNA into the art," Nergal told Australia's Heavy magazine about having his blood included in "The Satanist" artwork.
"This album seems to be so defining of who we are now as people and as individuals, and considering all the instances in recent years, [we wanted] to make it more 'ours' than it is usually."
In a recent interview with Revolver magazine, Darski described BEHEMOTH's new songs as "very atmospheric" and "very emotional." "Think BURZUM meets NEW ORDER meets KILLING JOKE," he added. But at the same time, fans shouldn't expect the album to sound too far removed from BEHEMOTH's past efforts. "Take SLAYER, for example," Darski said. "Whatever genre they deal with, they still end up sounding like SLAYER. Even when they were flirting with nu-metal, it was a SLAYER record. Same with BEHEMOTH."
According to Darski, at least some of the inspiration for the new BEHEMOTH album came from his five-month bout of leukemia he overcame in January 2011, after receiving a bone-marrow transplant. "When I was in the hospital, I was collecting experiences and emotions," he said. "I'm pretty sure that it's coming out now. There are moments I catch myself thinking about how my state was back then. It was me versus life, me versus death. It definitely changed my thoughts a lot. It's 100 percent being reflected in the record and songs I'm writing nowadays. I'm way more radical than I used to be."
"The Satanist" track listing:
01. Blow Your Trumpets Gabriel
02. Furor Divinus
03. Messe Noire
04. Ora Pro Nobis Lucifer
05. Amen
06. The Satanist
07. Ben Sahar
08. In the Absence ov Light
09. O Father O Satan O Sun!
During a brand new interview on "The MetalSucks Podcast", MEGADETH mainman Dave Mustaine was asked by SLAYER bassist/vocalist Tom Araya's recent claim that "the politics of character in one particular band" were preventing more shows featuring the so-called "Big Four" of 1980s thrash metal — METALLICA, SLAYER, MEGADETH and ANTHRAX — from happening in the future.
"I didn't say that [no more 'Big Four' shows were ever going to happen again]. I said that I'm not the one to ask," Mustaine said.
"I love Tom," he contonued. "I think that all the hardship that we've had has been really sad, because, again, the media and stuff like that sometimes…
"People back in the day would try and propagandize everything I would say or put this inflammatory twist on whatever.
"There was things I did and said that caused some problems between Tom and I, and we worked it out.
"So, man, I have no problem with him or ANTHRAX or METALLICA, so I don't know where that came from. It could be some really old stuff that got regurgitated again. But, you know, I buried the hatchet a long time ago with those guys."
Speaking to Gazette.net, Araya spoke about the possibility of more "Big Four" shows in the future, saying: "I don't want to say politics is preventing that," Araya said. "It's not the politics between bands; it's the politics of character in one particular band."
He continued: "We had an issue that came up on the New York show, which really freaked everybody out, but the New York show happened. I think, in all honesty, that was the last time we did the 'Big Four.'
"I think another 'Big Four' show might not happen. They could prove me wrong.
"Those shows, basically, even though it was called the 'Big Four,' it was done through METALLICA. It was with METALLICA's blessing that allowed those shows to happen.
"If they want to continue and do a couple more shows, I think that would be great… If we were to sit down with them and communicate with them, that's what I'd tell them."
The "Big Four" played its last concert on September 14, 2011 at Yankee Stadium in New York City.
Two days prior to the "Big Four" event in New York, rumors spread that MEGADETH had pulled out of the concert so that Dave Mustaine could undergo surgery for stenosis, a neck and spine condition that he said was caused by "years of headbanging." Mustaine eventually had a change of heart and decided to go through with the performance, but struggled through the set due to the pain. He later told NY Hard Rock Music Examiner: "It was very close, the day after that. I was supposed to not do that show. I'd been laying in the emergency room getting ready to have them put me to sleep, and I’d said we had to cancel the concert. And one of the people associated with the concert said I was a pussy, and I thought, 'I'm a pussy. I'm getting ready to have two major spinal surgeries done and I'm a pussy. Okay.' Obviously, you don't know what pussy is, because that's not pussy."
In his autobiography, "Mustaine: A Heavy Metal Memoir", Mustaine addressed the issue of where his band fit in the "Big Four" order. According to The New York Times, he assured the reader that he was not offended by being put behind SLAYER. But he added an interior monologue: "O.K., we'll play ahead of you guys on this trip, and God willing we'll do it again sometime in the near future and we can flip things around."
The idea for the "Big Four" tour first came up in 2009 and METALLICA drummer Lars Ulrich told The Pulse Of Radio he was glad to finally see it happen. "It's pretty amazing, if you think about it, that it's the first time basically in 25 years or 30 or whatever that the four of us have actually played shows together," he said. "So it was a lot of fun, a lot of memories, a lot of fun times — new fun times, and fun times talking about the old fun times. So it sort of was a, it was a winner on every front."
In the spring of 2011, METALLICA, SLAYER, MEGADETH and ANTHRAX were presented with double-platinum plaques for the two-disc DVD release of "The Big Four: Live From Sofia, Bulgaria", containing footage of the June 22, 2010 Sonisphere cinecast from the Sofia, Bulgaria leg of the touring rock festival featuring all four groups. The presentation took place on April 23, 2011 at the first-ever "Big Four" concert on American soil at the Empire Polo Club in Indio, California.
"The Big Four: Live From Sofia, Bulgaria" was certified double platinum on December 17, 2010 by the Recording Industry Association Of America (RIAA) for shipments in excess of 100,000 copies. (Note: Due to the fact that the set consists of two discs, it was eligible for platinum certification after shipping 50,000 copies; platinum certification for a single-disc release is 100,000 copies.)
"The Big Four: Live From Sofia, Bulgaria" debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard "Top Music Videos" sales chart in November with first-week sales of 22,000 copies. The set also debuted at No. 1 in Canada, the U.K. and Austria, while entering at No. 4 in Germany.
"The Big Four: Live From Sofia, Bulgaria" set features full shows from all four bands along with behind-the-scenes and interview footage.
