Interviews

 

Lacuna Coil

 

Internal friction almost spelt the end for LACUNA COIL before their career had even begun. Vocalist Cristina Scabbia tells ROD YATES that what didn’t kill them only made them stronger.

 

In the December of 1997, Italian metallers Lacuna Coil faced one of those moments that either ends or defines a career. Halfway through their first ever European tour, supporting Portuguese doom merchants Moonspell, the sextet were broke and hungry, but excited and optimistic – their debut, self-titled EP was due for release in a few months, and after years of dreaming about being a real, touring rock band, they were finally “doing it”. And then half the band quit. Gone. At which point the remaining members (bassist Marco Coti-Zelati and co-vocalists Cristina Scabbia and Andrea Ferro) had to make a choice – give up and go home, or somehow make it through the rest of the tour. They chose the latter, and from that moment on knew that this was for life.

“It gave us the determination to continue this job,” explains the amiable Scabbia from the UK offices of label Century Media. “We had three days to think about it, and we decided to do it with the help of Moonspell and some of their roadies. It made us realise we really want to do this.”

It may have taken another five years, two albums and one EP, but with the 2002 release of their third CD, Comalies, the band’s determination started to pay off. Critically acclaimed and, in Europe at least, relatively successful, at the time of its release the US was yet to take much notice of the sextet. Two years of relentless touring later, and MTV finally started playing the videos for Heaven’s A Lie and Swamped, and Lacuna Coil were picked to tour America on the 2004 Ozzfest. And then things really started to go crazy.

“We became one of the biggest selling bands on the Ozzfest, and the signing lines were so long, it was amazing,” gushes Scabbia. “The whole Ozzfest was so good for us.”

By tour’s end Comalies had become Century Media’s biggest ever selling album, and America had woken up to the band’s mix of sumptuous Gothic melodies and crunching European metal. After nearly 10 years, Lacuna Coil were now officially a Very Big Deal.
What this means for Scabbia is that she’s currently doing more promo to support new album Karmacode than she’s ever done in her life. She’ll tell you it’s worth it, though, because the more records they sell, the more money they can pour back into the band.

“Even now we had a bigger budget compared to Comalies, and you can hear it,” she boasts of Karmacode. “We had more time to pick up every single sound, we had more time to mix it. In the past we mixed four songs in one day, but now we have more days to mix one song and you can definitely hear it.”

Whether it’s the added studio time, or the beckoning of the lucrative US market, but Karmacode represents something of a direction shift for the band. Admittedly it’s not huge, but nestling in amongst their trademark drama and the duelling vocals of Scabbia and Ferro is a powerful, radio-friendly sheen, not to mention the odd riff that veers perilously close to nu-metal territory. Which, it turns out, was the plan.

“Now I think we are the missing link between Europe and America, because we incorporated a bigger sound which was not present before,” explains the vocalist. “But at the same time we are still keeping the melody, the arrangements and the structures that are typical of Europe. So we’re definitely taking all the parts we like the most from both sides. Karmacode is much groovier and more dynamic than our older albums.”

It’s also a lot more involved lyrically, with several of the tracks touching on the theme of trying to explain religion through the use of mathematical formulas. First single Our Truth, however, is a slightly more straight forward proposition.

“It’s a little biography of the band, cos it’s talking about how since the beginning we’ve been doing what we really want to do without following any trends.”

And here Scabbia’s voice swells with pride.

“Now its paid off, cos we are free to do whatever we want and no one will say, ‘Oh, they changed’, cos we’ve always been so eclectic and so different from album to album.”

 

 

 

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