Goth gospel? Christian rock or just Christians who rock? Evanescence hurtled along the dusty road from Little Rock, Arkansas, to the upper reaches of the album charts in double quick time. It's almost as though there's someone watching  over them. But, as the band's singer, Amy Lee, tells Brian Boyd, it hasn't all been plain sailing.

As members of a weird religious cult with arcane rituals and bizarre edicts, rock band Evanescence were always going to struggle crossing over into the musical mainstream. So much so that cynics claim that when the band were on the verge of a massive breakthrough they contrived to get themselves thrown out of their cult. Evanescence began by distancing themselves from their movement. "We're Christians in a rock band, not a Christian rock band," they said. An interview in Rolling Stone magazine distanced them even further: "Our album is actually high on the Christian charts and we're like, what the fuck are we even doing there?" they exclaimed last year.

For a band that had initially been broken on the Christian circuit (yes, there is one), there was hell to pay. Their album, Fallen, was promptly withdrawn from the racks of Christian bookshops. "We had a lot of complaints about the lyrics and the sex and the drugs," said the owner of the Lifeway Christian bookshop in the band's native Little Rock, Arkansas. "They offended some people so we stopped selling them."

Christian Music Magazine withdrew all of Evanescence's advertising from its pages and, in an editorial, went on to ask readers to disregard a positive review of Fallen they had previously carried. "We apologise for any confusion this may provide, but we don't want to provide an endorsement for the band or its message," they wrote.

The magazine's record label, Wind Up, weighed in also, with their MD saying: "We will scrutinise our Christian artists' belief with more diligence. I will personally inform all of our future artists who represent themselves as Christian artists and wish to be represented in the Christian community that in doing so they must understand the lasting commitment and ongoing commitment that involves".

Evanescence were always a strange Goth-Gospel pairing. They were formed by charismatic singer Amy Lee and guitarist Ben Moody, who met at a religious youth camp while in their teens. After signing to the predominantly but not exclusively Christian record label, Wind Up, their Linkin Park meets Tori Amos at a folk mass sound quickly took off. The single, Bring Me To Life, featured on the soundtrack of the Ben Affleck vehicle Daredevil and the resultant album, Fallen, a big, muscular goth-rock affair, has now sold over six million copies worldwide.

With lyrics like "My God, my tourniquet/Return to me salvation/My wounds cry for the grave/My soul cries for deliverance/Will I be denied Christ", and solid endorsements from the Christian music scene, Evanescence always kept with the "not a Christian band, just Christians in a band" line and now would really rather not talk about the C word at all. So much so that Amy Lee's answer to the C question, is, well, Jesuitical.

"There was a controversy for a while," she says, "but I don't feel any need to say anything about it - it's like beating a dead horse. We never said we were a 'Christian band'; we're not a Christian band. It was all just hype, people trying to find something wrong with us because we did really well really quickly. And we're still with Wind Up records! They're not a Christian label - that's just another media hype. They have some bands that are Christian, but they also have bands that have nothing to do with it."

Like most bands that have been associated in some way with the Christian Rock movement, there is nothing "happy-clappy" about Evanescence's sound. They are a dramatic and dark metal band who are appreciated most by people who wear heavy dark eyeliner. Lyrically, they're fashionably doom and gloom, and all things considered, have more in common with Marilyn Manson than Cliff Richard.

Their inexorable rise - Fallen is one of the biggest selling débuts of the last decade - was shaken a few months ago with the sudden and unexplained departure of guitarist and co-founder Moody.

Lee was "shocked" at Moody's abrupt exit. "I wasn't sure about the future of the band for a while," she says. "He left, I think, because he was really unhappy and increasingly removed and angry - with no explanation. I don't think we will be working together again. He is doing his own thing now." Moody now writes for the genius that is Avril Lavigne.

"It's still very much Evanescence despite his departure," says Lee. "And we still have the same passion as before. Musically, I think we're going to have the freedom to go in to a lot more places than we did previously, and the way the band is set up now, there's a lot more freedom for everyone."

But getting back to the Christian controversy. Some people are reading something religiously literal into the naming of the album. Lee says: "We're not in the business of alienating anybody, if someone picks up our CD and listens to it and likes it, we love them. So I just hope this whole thing hasn't made anyone think that we're against any particular group or anything. The whole point is that the music is for everyone. We just don't want to be put in a box - 'the Christian band' - we're not a Christian band and the album isn't Christian in any sense. There are personal things on there about isolation, solitude, longing, sadness, anger and pain, even. It's for everyone - regardless of their own personal beliefs. . ."

Fallen is on the Wind Up/Epic label