Lacuna Coil

Comalies (Century Media)
by Scott Hefflon

I must confess to liking lots of melodramatic Goth metal, but never really getting Italy’s Lacuna Coil. Cristina’s voice seemed too The Gathering (and I mean that in a songbird showoff way) and her male-counterpoint, Andrea, just second-rate…

And while there are still plenty of clunker moments and weak, swirly noodling on Comalies, Andrea is pretty snarling Hetfield when not over-dramatizing everything like a goofball (“look [hushed pause], in the skyyy-ya [snarling end], there are cloudz-ahh [dramatic whisper], and small birdzz-ah”), and Cristina sounds like she realizes she’s in a band now, not trying to win every Best Female Vocalist award she can lay her tits, er, mitts on. But I think it’s Waldemar Sorychta’s more-metal production that wins me over… He’s done all their recs, and it was probably the band’s intention to get harder on this record.

I give him credit, cuz when this record swells, man, it’s a tropical storm (warm gusts of air, a downpour of rain like the heavens dumping an ocean on the Earth), the sheer might and magnitude leaving you humbled. “Heaven’s a Lie” is the closest thing to a Drain STH tune as I’ve heard, and I so loved that band…
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