Evanescence 'Thrilled' By #1 Billboard Debut

On Wednesday (October 19), Evanescence officially completed their comeback when it was announced that their self-titled third album would top next week's Billboard albums chart, with sales of more than 127,000 copies.

It's the band's second-consecutive #1 debut: As any Ev fan surely knows, their last was five years ago, when The Open Door bowed atop the charts in 2006.

And in the time since, they've shed members, gone on a hiatus and, as frontwoman Amy Lee told, very nearly called it quits entirely.

So you can certainly understand why Lee and her bandmates are feeling so happy today. In an e-mail to MTV News, the singer decided to share a bit of that happiness with us and with Evanescence's fanbase.

"What can I say, we're thrilled about it!" she wrote. "We made an album that we're really proud of and now we get to watch it fly. We weren't expecting this and we're just so grateful to our fans."

It's certainly been a long road back. After coming back together, Evanescence holed up with producer Nick Raskulinecz in Nashville and unveiled the fruits of that labor to MTV News in July. They then premiered the first single, "What You Want," live on MTV in August and played a raucous release-day show in Los Angeles last week.

They'll play a run of U.S. and U.K. shows until early November, and, armed with a #1 album, they're planning a full-blown Stateside tour in early January.