Here’s a totally accurate chronology of my Lacuna Coil fandom: I heard a killer LC jam on the radio and was awed by singer Cristina Scabbia. Then I saw a band photo and got awestruck this time by Scabbia the woman. Then once fourth album Karmacode came out in 2007, my awe umbrella’ed out to include the songwriters of Lacuna Coil and, upon 2009’s Shallow Life, also their producer Don Gilmore.

But here’s where I’ll get all Oprah: Though a huge fan of Scabbia’s voice and a forged-by-nature respondent to her wealth of physical charms, I find the most awesome Scabbia is not the singer or the super-fox; she’s most awesome at being a bud, an honest dude, and a great chat. When we connected last week to talk about Dark Adrenaline, the once-delayed sixth Lacuna Coil album (out tomorrow), she effortlessly plowed through abstract questions and hasty analogies, and totally got the vibe of my persistent nagging about sales, producers, and artistic integrity. It was awesome!

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The new Lacuna Coil song, “Kill the Light,” is like 95% the excellent, infectious pop metal I love from these Eye-talians — but man, it really doesn’t go anywhere, does it? The energy level of the chorus isn’t noticeably higher than that of the verse, and Andrea Ferro’s phrasing just seems… I dunno, off, to me. Even the bridge seems more exciting to me than the chorus. It’s weird.

And kind of a bummer, ’cause like I said, for the most part, I think the song is great. And I’m still really stoked to hear the rest of LC’s new album, Dark Adrenaline.

Check out “Kill the Light” below and see if you think I’m nutty or what. Dark Adrenaline comes out January 24 via Century.

LACUNA COIL – Kill The Light by Crabby Medea Records

-AR

FEATURING MEMBERS OF LACUNA COIL, TRAPPED UNDER ICE, ALLEGAEON, CULTED, MILLIONS, BIRTH A.D., AND NIGHTFALL

Every year year, MetalSucks asks musicians from across the vast spectrum of the metalsphere (or, in a few cases, the almost-metalsphere) what their favorite albums of the year have been. Death metallers, thrash metallers, black metallers, stoners, grinders, and djenters alike graciously contributed lists to MS, and we’ll be running them in groups of nine to ten musicians at a time twice a day for the whole week.

After the jump, check out the first group… we hope you enjoy seeing what some of metal’s heaviest hitters were into this year as much as we have!

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So Blabbermouth posted this live footage of Lacuna Coil performing at the Graspop Metal Meeting in Belgium a few weeks back. I clicked, figuring I’d at least get to oggle at Cristina Scabbia; the one-camera shoot meant this ended up not being the case, but I at least got to hear her very sexy voice… and male vocalist Andrea Ferro’s vocal diarrhea.

True, soundboard recordings are always a mixed bag; you hear each instrument clearly, but you don’t necessarily hear them the way they sounded live because house engineers mix to the sound of the venue, not through headphones. But Ferro’s performance is just undeniably, horrifyingly god awful. “Spellbound” starts off innocently enough with the instrumental intro, after which Ferro takes a stab at his first verse. I don’t think it’s possible for him to sound any worse; I mean, it’s like… just BAD. How is this guy still in the band? And to make matters worse, Cristina Scabbia follows him with a chorus that sounds practically perfect, arresting as always, as if to say “This guy sucks so bad, doesn’t he?”

-VN

Lacuna Coil makes it easy for haters. For one thing, their latest (and best) album ostensibly explores the meaninglessness of modern life, yet Shallow Life itself is immediate, thoughtless pop. Luckily, it’s awesome pop, to be enjoyed in the same disposable way as Doritos and Indiana Jones: as good, pointless fun. And though it suffers for its lack of depth, most of the Shallow Life experience is awesome hookery bolstered by Don Gilmore’s micro-tuned (post-)production. Arrangements are mercilessly utilitarian, with very few intros or outros or reps. At first, the record’s swift economy of riffage kinda feels like abridgement, like Reader’s Digest’s Shallow Life. But it’s soon clear that the brevity is basically a mercy killing, cuz, if you recall, guitarists Cristiano Migliore and Marco Biazzi played like vaginas on 2006’s otherwise awesome Karmacode. Those two either needed to get a style, or be banished to the background with (snicker) the keyboard player – and they are on Shallow Life. Out of convenience if not necessity, Gilmore’s Lacuna Coil is no longer a guitar band, but a pop band with heavy guitars, like Paramore, Garbage, and In Flames.

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