Lacuna Coil - Metropolitan gothic-metal

Lacuna Coil are probably the best expression of the (re)birth of an Italian scene in the metal field that breaks away from the classic canons of "power" metal, which until a few years ago was the sole focus of 99 percent of Italian metalheads. Trying to pigeonhole their music into simple categories wouldn't do justice to the range of emotions each of their songs manages to convey to the listener, just as limiting oneself (or stubbornly insisting) on constant comparisons with their "parent bands" risks leading astray anyone wanting to get closer to the group.

The Milan-based group was formed under the name "Sleep Of Right" in January 1994; during this period they played a handful of live shows and recorded a track for an independent label compilation in May 1995. With the arrival of Claudio Leo, Leonardo Forti and Cristina Scabbia in the line-up, the group changed its name to "Ethereal", recording a demo ("Promo-tape '96") that received glowing reviews across all the major Italian music press, earning them a deal with the record label "Century Media" (the first Italian band to join this "big family").

From the very beginning, the band bears the strong imprint of its striking singer and front-girl Cristina Scabbia. "I started singing in 1991, mostly just for fun," the Milanese vocalist has recalled. "I used to sing soul stuff, even dance tracks, and I 'lent' my voice to a few record labels. I never took lessons, partly because they usually cost a fortune here and I could never afford it. My introduction to the metal scene came when I met my boyfriend, Marco, who's now the band's bassist - he's a real enthusiast, and he basically initiated me into the genre." Among the vocalists who influenced her most, Cristina cites Tori Amos, but also the singer of Morcheeba, Skye Edwards. "In general," she explains, "I love Black voices enormously, not for technical reasons, but for just how much they manage to give in terms of expressiveness: I adore singing that comes from the heart."

The new name change to "Lacuna Coil", the "empty spiral", brought with it a transformation in sound, further steeped in a gothic/ambient component that would come to fruition on the striking debut, the self-titled EP Lacuna Coil, released toward the end of 1997. The record reveals Lacuna Coil as a kind of "female version" of Type O Negative. Gothic pomp pairs with tense, spectral atmospheres, alongside pure metal energy. The opener "No Need To Explain" perfectly combines the violence of the guitars, the sinuous keyboards and the singer's melancholy voice. "The Secret..." rests on a tight exchange between male and female vocals. "Soul Into Hades" is an inexorable descent into hell. "Falling" is a cold, ethereal song of death. And the closing "A Ghost Between Us" ideally merges Type O Negative and Bauhaus.

The success of this little gem of just over 28 minutes was immediate, winning wide acclaim not only in Italy but also across Europe and the States; the first consequence of their debut was a support tour with Moonspell (December '97), where the Milanese outfit tested their live chops in front of sizeable crowds. During the spring of the following year, the band enjoyed considerable success on a tour alongside the Gathering, bringing this Italian revelation to the attention of audiences across Europe and sparking fervent anticipation for their debut full-length from that point on.

That anticipation would be rewarded in February 1999 with the release of In A Reverie, an album destined to earn the band a genuine following, confirming the promise shown on their first EP. The changes compared to the mini-album are nonetheless numerous, starting with the line-up, which saw the two guitarists replaced by newcomer Cristiano Migliore, while the drummer was also swapped out for Cristiano Mozzati. The band's growing maturity is also evident in the sound, with a more direct approach to songwriting and a near-perfect interplay between the two voices, Cristina Scabbia's female vocals and Andrea Ferro's male ones; also excellent is the work of bassist Marco Coti Zelati, one of the group's compositional driving forces.

The tracklist contains eight new songs plus a new version of "Falling" from the aforementioned Lacuna Coil EP, retitled for the occasion as "Falling Again". It opens with the engaging "Circle", followed by the slower "Statley Lover". "Honeymoon Suite" and "My Wings" are the album's standout tracks, with the alternating male/female vocals of Andrea and Cristina evoking Theatre Of Tragedy. "To Myself I Turned" is written by Waldemar Sorychta (in a sense the band's sixth member) and is sung exclusively by Cristina Scabbia. The melancholy "Reverie" and the poignant "Veins of Glass" round off the record.

The widespread acclaim the album received would be confirmed by the band's exhilarating live performances, both at major international festivals (Wacken '98, Dynamo '99, Gods Of Metal '99) and on their European tour alongside the "Celtic" Skyclad.

After the release of the EP Halflife (2000), it was time for the album Unleashed Memories (2001). The record makes use of vibrant guitar tones, at once vivid and transcendent, alongside Mozzati's usual refined rhythmic work on drums and the now-mature voices of Cristina and Andrea on the mics. There's a drizzly, autumnal feel to it, punctuated by sudden outbursts. "Heir Of A Dying Day" rises majestic and moody right from the start, while the rearranged version of the intense "Senzafine" is even more gripping than the original, perhaps thanks to that brilliant closing string coda that seems to herald the coming storm. Instead, the rain keeps falling gently, like a damp caress in the almost otherworldly vocal ecstasy of the gorgeous "When A Dead Man Walks", or like the dizzying certainty longed for in the gripping guitar progression of "Cold Heritage". All this before the atmosphere heats up in the Eastern-tinged calls/rituals of "To Live Is To Die" and "1:19", echoing the shrewd sonic exploration charted by the EP "Half Life".

The year 2002 brought Comalies, the album that cemented their status. Meticulously arranged and polished with carefully crafted breaks and interludes, the record also marks an evolution in the band's sound. Rather than pure "gothic metal", in fact, we're faced with a hard-to-label blend of hard rock, tight rhythms and symphonic melodies. The album offers romantic moments like the title track alongside tracks that recall Lacuna Coil's rightful place in the scene, such as the decidedly heavy "Angel's Punishment". Adding an extra edge to it all are the vocal melodies of Andrea Ferro and the ever-improving Cristina Scabbia, who, besides earning comparisons to artists of the calibre of Natalie Merchant and Kate Bush, is also hugely popular with male fans for the sex appeal she brings to her live performances. The lyrics are all in English, with the sole exception of the single that gives the album its title. But according to the band themselves, that was just an impromptu experiment: Lacuna Coil would continue to favour the foreign language.

Comalies confirms the band's potential as leaders of the gothic-metal scene, a genre by then too steeped in compromises and "(un)natural evolutions", which was in need of a new entity, powerful and melancholy at once. The Milanese combo had already earned widespread critical acclaim, even landing on the covers of several international specialist magazines, starting with Britain's "Terrorizer".

Meanwhile, the band's fame grew abroad, reaching as far as the United States, with Cristina Scabbia even appearing on the cover of Rolling Stone. With Comalies, for the first time in their history, they entered Billboard's Top 200, the chart certifying the best-selling albums in the United States.

In 2006 Lacuna Coil returned with Karmacode, a dense, overproduced record built on a pumped-up, obsessive bass line and hefty, down-tuned guitars with a clear nu-metal stamp (cf. Korn). This evolution (devolution?) on the instrumental front is nonetheless handled gradually across the record, since echoes of its predecessor's complex orchestrations can still be heard in tracks like the opener "Fragile", the thoroughly accomplished "Devoted" (which edges close to Paradise Lost territory), the biting "To The Edge", or the stirring diptych made up of "In Visible Light" and "Without Fear".

On the tracks mentioned above, Lacuna Coil's craft and class guarantee a satisfying listening experience. A shame, then, about the anonymous, plastic-sounding riffs of tracks like "What I See", "The Game" or "Fragments Of Faith", which are entirely lacking in the emotional nuances (gothic in nature, not nu-metal) capable of amplifying the band's expressive power.

Having mentioned the decent outings "Within Me" (a conventional yet pleasant ballad) and "Our Truth" (a single that revives those Middle Eastern-tinged sounds), there remains the successful cover of Depeche Mode's "Enjoy The Silence", which, however, adds little to the overall verdict.

Definitely inferior to Comalies, Karmacode has its highs and lows, though it does confirm the melodic skill of Cristina and co. More groove and less atmosphere (even the vocals, no longer front and centre, have been sacrificed on the altar of sonic impact), making for a transitional album.

Having risen to international stardom, complete with a Rolling Stone cover, Cristina Scabbia and co., however, had run out of steam. Shallow Life (2009), their sixth full-length, scrapes the bottom of the barrel, indulging in easy melodic solutions and retreading already well-worn paths. Sure, production by Don Gilmore, one of the men responsible for some of Linkin Park's worst missteps, is almost a trademark of (a lack of) quality. But even on the songwriting front, the impression is that the band is at an all-time low. True, a few electronic patterns remain to bolster the sound, but even the rougher, heavier moments (the opening "I Survive", "Underground") drown in banality. The band, in short, settles onto the safe rails of chart-friendly pop-rock ("I'm Not Afraid" dangerously apes Linkin Park), which, at its best, finds in Scabbia's voice the ideal vehicle for melodies that are nonetheless catchy (the classic ballads of the title track and "Wild Awake"). But the personality that had lit up the most inspired moments of their career is missing, and so it ends up that the best track on the record is an all-too-obvious homage to Paradise Lost, "The Pain".

Still worth noting, however, is the Milanese band's international success, even in the United States, a rare and almost unique case in the Italian rock scene.

By now firmly established internationally, perhaps even more so than at home, Lacuna Coil returned to unleash their blasts of Dark Adrenaline (2012), an album with a vigorous, robust attitude, almost as if reacting against the drop in tension of its predecessor.

Twelve tracks for a new journey into darkness, as theorised by the powerful overture ("Trip The Darkness"), driven by solemn drumming and a wall of guitar wattage. Compared to other heavy bands, Lacuna Coil have always had no small advantage: replacing the obligatory growl with the sensual, magnetic voice of the charismatic Cristina Scabbia, who here weaves a fine dialogue with Andrea Ferro's, giving birth to the best track on the record: a bit Gathering, a bit Nightwish, and undeniably compelling.

No less dark, the diptych "Against You"-"Killing The Light" cranks the volume back up over machine-gun drumming, with the two vocal lines once again trading off while the guitar veers into blazing yet hollow solos.

Better, all things considered, is the introspective vein of ballads like the atmospheric "Give Me Something More", albeit with its predictable lyrical baggage of souls in turmoil, and the romantic apocalypse of "End Of Time", with Scabbia once again at the forefront. On the "adrenaline-fuelled" side, however, too many anonymous tracks dissipate the initial tension ("I Don't Believe In Tomorrow", "Intoxicated" and "The Army Inside"), mixing electronic effects and sharp riffs with decidedly déjà vu melodic turns.

In the end, the encore doesn't match the brilliant cover of "Enjoy The Silence" by Depeche Mode: this time, tackling the totem that is "Losing My Religion" by R.E.M., even Cristina's voice can't break free from a colourless heavy-rock treatment that completely loses the charm of the original.

All things considered, the attempt to revitalise the band's original sound is commendable, but these days Lacuna Coil, beyond Cristina's lovely voice and the occasional evocative foray into gothic atmospheres, seem to have little else left to offer.

The feeling is confirmed two years later on their third consecutive flatlining album, Broken Crown Halo. The picture is merciless, and what's most frustrating is the presence of a handful of ideas that prove Lacuna Coil aren't dead and haven't forgotten how to make music. Indeed, "I Forgive (But I Won't Forget You)" would have the right attitude too, if it weren't marred by a chorus that seems tacked on just for the sake of consistency, incapable of conveying anything. And then there's the provocative "Cybersleep", which, however much it falls into pure self-quotation, could have stood out in a very different way had it not been swamped by a pointless blanket of strings. Not to mention the closing of "One Cold Day", the only track that scrapes by, leaning on a veiled psychodrama that's mostly style over substance, but which as a whole even manages to shine.

The rest is a disaster with neither head nor tail, well heralded by the irritating electronic whispers that introduce the obtuse opening of "Nothing Stands In Our Way" and recur in the even more embarrassing "Die & Rise", a concentrate of all the worst clichés surrounding the tackiest side of pop-metal. Not to mention "Infection", which leans on the sounds European teenagers went crazy for five or six years ago, but which today find no traction except among the minority who "like metal" — but only the easy kind. "Zombies", "Victims" and "I Burn In You" could be the exact same song performed with different guitar effects and with lyrics and vocal parts respectively altered and swapped. The same goes for "Hostage To The Life" and "In The End I Feel Alive", once again driven by synthetic punctuation marks devoid of the soul that's missing from the whole record, a genuine exercise in unjustified self-harm.

After three albums stuck on the same unsalvageable wavelength, the hope that the Milanese sextet might pull off a late comeback to the heights of their past looks more and more like pure utopia.

The return of Lacuna Coil is always news, especially for the many fans living outside Italy's borders. Unfairly mocked by those in Italy who can't perceive metal beyond an imaginary world of studs and motorcycles, the Milanese band's story is one that deserves to be approached with a certain intellectual honesty, regardless of personal taste. There's no doubt that scanning the tracklist of Black Anima brings a few issues to a head, namely those two or three filler tracks that don't leave a mark the way they should (particularly "The End Is All I Can See" and "Save Me"). But this matters little to the band's aficionados, who will already have devoured all twelve tracks of the new album with their eyes closed. The melancholy refrain of "Now Or Never" is a ray of sunshine after the storm, while "Veneficium" brings back the band's old gothic metal temptations, with Cristina's voice in absolute top form. A comeback that doesn't add much to their discography, though it does show a renewed overall cohesion that manages to compensate for the inevitable creaks in the songwriting. We've reached nine albums regardless, much to the annoyance of those who can't stand them

Contributions by Matteo Meda ("Broken Crown Halo") and Paolo Chemnitz ("Black Anima")

* © Sensorium – (Fonte: Circle of Regrets)

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