Goth’s not dead.
Goth’s not even close to dead, thanks in no small part to bands like Lacuna Coil, celebrated mainstays of the genre leading the way forward and paving a path for new bands. Those in the know will be familiar with the Italian gothfathers, a celebrated collective who have been warping innocent minds with some of the darkest and heaviest music around for well over 20 years. But even if you haven’t encountered the band directly, you’ll surely be aware of them through the incredible influence they have had on the entire goth genre, spawning a thousand imitators in their wake.
The band’s last Antipodean trip culminated in a Soundwave showing some seven years ago, so Andrea Ferro, Lacuna Coil’s male vocalist, sees the band’s upcoming October tour as a perfect time to come back to Australia. “We’ve been wanting to come back,” says Ferro. “We needed something like Soundwave to carry us last time, but now our tour collides well with the release of the record. It’s been a combination of things [stopping us from coming]. Maybe we weren’t really available, maybe the record wasn’t doing so well. But this, this is the right time.”
The sensuality, passion and fury with which Lacuna Coil master metal onstage has never once wavered over the course of their more than two-decade long career, even if their lineups have. The band are famous for swapping up members – they’re one of those acts that have a little bandmember timeline plonked right towards the end of their Wikipedia page. That said, though their upcoming tour will feature debut Australian showings for some members, Ferro is adamant this the revolving lineup only enhances the cabaret aspect of their sets.
“We’ve had band members retiring from the music business,” he says. “Ryan Folden has been with us on drums for eight years, since our old drummer retired. A new guitar player, Diego [Cavallotti] played lead guitars on the album and now we’re trying him on the live shows. In Asia, North America and European festivals: he worked well with us. Hopefully we’ll keep him as a permanent member of the band, but none of us are pushing the relationship: we want to work with him and see how everybody feels before we [incorporate] him fully into the next album.”
Lacuna Coil are a celebrated live act, and though each of the band’s records has been enthusiastically embraced by fans, their real power shines onstage. “When we play, it’s a bit like a party,” Ferro says. “We want people to participate and spend their energy with us. It’s a different energy live – we’ll be debuting a lot of the new songs in Australia.
“It’s very important to offer entertainment, not just be a band that can play their songs. We’ve been playing songs live and we’ve been able to establish a different relationship with our music and our fans. When we go to play places we don’t play so often, there’s a family feel [to] the crowd. We hope that’ll be the same in Australia. It’s like going to see a friend.”
With newest album Delirium, the band stepped up to the plate as producers and performers, their bassist Marco Coti Zelati taking reins of the record. “Marco has stepped up as producer,” Ferro says. “Before this experience, he only worked with local bands in Milan: he’d never produced so much thrash as he did with our band.
“It’s been stressful for him, but it’s also been inspiring, and he’s been able to separate himself from being the musician, our friend, and been good at balancing the two roles. This album needed to be produced like this. Someone coming in and giving direction would have killed the mood. But there’s a lot of pressure for sure.”
Perhaps responding to that pressure, both Ferro and female vocalist Cristina Scabbia altered their working methods. “I’ve been pushing more towards heavy vocals and she’s been pushing more to the high notes,” Ferro explains. “The music required a more extreme, in-your-face approach and more epic high notes. It’s been very important to try this. I’ve used growl vocals in the past but [this time] it’s been good to push myself. It’s been fun to try and express myself differently. We’re learning how to expand with this different approach: it can be a challenge to make it balance [and] flow with older records.”
The creative process behind the album stretched the group not just musically but also on a personal level, with Ferro and Scabbia writing music that reflected the very darkest recesses of their soul. “Delirium is about the horrors that we must face in everyday life by exploring the unknown,” Ferro says, simply. “One day we will hopefully find the cure to [that unknown].
“Delirium is maybe the first album where I struggled to find one song that represented the record or myself. For me it’s a trip, so I express different things on different songs. There’s a different atmosphere for [each] different song. ‘My Demons’ is a bit more personal to me, but the whole record, it’s the last two or three years of our lives put together in one album. It really is a reflection of events over the last year of my life – my demons.”
[Lacuna Coil by Alessandro Olgiatii]
Deliriumis out now through Century Media andLacunaCoil play theMetro Theatre on Friday October 14.
