Origin was the first full length demo CD released by Rock band Evanescence on the Big-Wig Enterprises label. Although some people consider this to be Evanescence's first album, the lead singer Amy Lee has explicitly said that she doesn't consider it to be an album but rather a "dressed up" demo CD. Released in 2000, Origin was only sold to audiences in their hometown of Little Rock, Arkansas. Only 500 albums were printed, but due to the band's recent popularity, the number of overpriced and pirated versions of Origin have sky-rocketed. Evanescence has been reported to say that they prefer their fans to copy/download the CD rather than buy it.

Due to the limited amount of official copies, enterprising bootleggers have been selling fake copies of the album at inflated prices over many Internet shops, often with completely different tracks and cover art, and under the guise of a "Russian re-release." These CD's are in no way endorsed by the band.

Evanescence rerecorded three songs from this CD for their debut album Fallen. While "Whisper" and "My Immortal" are fundamentally the same on both disks, "Imaginary" exhibited a major change in structure between Origin and Fallen. In addition to these three songs, the band continued to play "Even in Death" in concert until late 2003.

Track listing

1. "Origin"
2. "Whisper"
3. "Imaginary"
4. "My Immortal"
5. "Where Will You Go"
6. "Field of Innocence"
7. "Even in Death"
8. "Anywhere"
9. "Lies"
10. "Away from Me"
11. "Eternal"

Two songs, "Listen to the Rain" (a song Amy Lee wrote for her high school graduation which included her school's choir) and "Demise" were cut from the album. The band originally had "Eternal" as track 11, "Listen to the Rain" as track 12, and "Demise" as track 13. However, in the end they decided to merge "Eternal" and "Demise" and cut "Listen to the Rain" from the album. "Demise" became the outro of "Eternal."

Two other songs that didn’t make it onto the CD were "Catherine," a song that Amy Lee and Ben Moody wrote together that was played live once or twice at their Little Rock shows, as well as "Spanish."

Additional Musicians

William Boyd Esquire, III - bass on "Away From Me"
Bruce Fitzhugh & Stephanie Pierce - vocals on "Lies"
Suvi Petrajajrvi, Sara Moore, Catherine Harris & Samantha Strong - female vocal ensemble on "Field of Innocence"

Evanescence albums | 2000 albums | Demo albums

Origin (album) | Origin | Origin | Origin