Lacuna Coil – Unleashed Memories – Review

Lacuna Coil

Unleashed Memories (Century Media)
by Scott Hefflon

People seem to love Lacuna Coil, so I held off on panning this sophomoric sophomore effort, trying to ease myself into whatever state of appreciation I seem to naturally lack. Nope. I still find them gloriously-produced (Grip Inc’s Waldemar Sorycha) male/female-vocaled Goth metal fluff skating dangerously close to pop diva shit. I also greatly dislike The Gathering, if that clues you in a bit. And I believe that aspiring to be a metal version of Natalie Merchant is, I dunno, just wrong. Like using your dick to drive nails into wood. Use a hammer, ya know? Or better yet, use a nail gun! You can paint an apple orange and it ain’t an orange, dig?

Unleashed Memories sounds very intentional to me, like math rock or Rush or something, and that undoes the dream-like flow of the soaring melodies. And the “grunting out a shit” male vocals are bad counterpoint to the angelic voice of what’shername… I can name two dozen stronger growlers without pause, so what’shisname oughtta stick to the baritone stuff he’s decent at. With over 70 minutes at hand (U.S. version includes the Halflife EP as a bonus, yippee), there’s plenty of good starts here, just very little that stick to yer grey matter once the CD stops spinning. Pretty but shallow, in my not-especially-humble opinion. I’ve actually come to like To/Die/For quite a lot in recent months, so if you haven’t sampled their male/female Goth metal flavor, give it a lick.
(1453-A 14th St. #324 Santa Monica, CA 90404)