Work on fourth album begins

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Work on a fourth studio album began in February 2011, with the band spending the first half of the year writing and demoing over 33 songs. The band again decided to work with Cavallo as a producer, but moved into a new sound and lyrical direction on the album, capturing a more of a message of “empowerment, perseverance, and inspiration”, inspired by Smith’s then-recent change of getting sober and living a healthier lifestyle, and the new band members contributing to the writing process for the first time on an album. The recording process wrapped up about a year later in February 2012, and the album, Amaryllis , was released the next month, on March 27, 2012, in 30 countries simultaneously, through a joint release between Atlantic and Roadrunner Records in countries Atlantic did not distribute into. Amaryllis debuted at number four on the Billboard 200 charts, selling 106,000 copies in its opening week. While the opening sales doubled the debut of The Sound of Madness , overall sales fell well short, with the album only being certified Gold, indicating a half million copies sold.