LACUNA COIL (Eng.)
– Hello, thanks for taking your time. What’s currently keeping LACUNA COIL busy? Much promo going on lately?
It’s only just started. With the release of the new album approaching i’m sure we’ll be doing a lot in the next few months/year. We just finished a very succesful UK tour, probably the most extended we’ve ever done with 18 shows, that was preceded by a few “warm-up” shows in our own country, Italy.
– You will soon release your new «Dark Adrenaline», what are your expectations with this album?
We love the album. It may sound obvious but we really believe this is our most mature and complete work to date so our expectations are definitely very high. I guess only time will tell what we’ll be able to achieve with it…
– Anyway you have already done some touring so, how has been the fans reaction toward the new songs?
We were totally blown away by our fans reaction. We were kind of expecting good reactions to Trip the Darkness since it had been released shortly before we started the tour but what we saw during the shows was even beyond those! Also, we played another track from Dark Adrenaline, Kill the Light, and even though people never heard it before the reaction was amazing! We’re really looking forward to play more new stuff!
– Have been 3 years since your previous «Shallow Life» came out, so I guess you may be eager for release a new album, weren’t you? Or maybe things go by faster when you are on tour?
No, we were totally looking forward to release a new album. We toured extensively for Shallow Life and towards the end we finally felt it was time to work on some new material.
– Overall this is a darker and more compact album, more aggressive. Did you plan this new «approach» or did everything just come out naturally?
It wasn’t really planned although we felt, after writing down a few new ideas for songs, that the direction we took was definitely more aggressive than what we did on Shallow Life, which we actually like a lot and just continued to write more in the same style.
– I guess this may be the reason for the album’s name? Is darker, heavier but full of energy and passion.
Absolutely. When it was time to find a title for the new album we just sat down and started thinking about something that would reflect the overall mood. Dark Adrenaline just sounded perfect!
– In fact songs as «Upside Down» sound specially heavy, even with a certain Nu Metal flavour. Have you opened to new influences?
I think we always had different moods in our albums. Some things are heavy and some are very delicate. If you take an album like Karmacode, for
example, I think you can easily say it’s one of our heaviest albums. It really depends on the moment in time the songs are written. Every album reflects who we are at that specific time and i guess that Dark Adrenaline is who Lacuna Coil is today.
– Because of all the aforementioned I would like to know how was the songwriting process like this time around, as I’d dare say this is your most risky and dynamic album so far.
I don’t think we did anything that was drastically different than what we usually do. We just sit down and record all the ideas that come to mind. I really think it’s just a matter of how we feel when we write the songs. Very little is planned ahead and when we do something we like we just want to do more and more of it.
– It also sounds more mature; do you think you have, or you will ever, reach your ultimate degree of mature? Anyway I guess there is always room for improvement and evolution.
I totally agree that there is always room for improvement. If we thought we couldn’t top this or that album or song there wouldn’t be any reason to continue. You always have to push yourself to go beyond what you just did and i hope we’ll just continue to do so.
– «Dark Adrenaline» is the strongest proof you have never repeated yourself (though you have never lost your roots); is this something important for LACUNA COIL?
Absolutely. We don’t like repeating ourselves and when we notice we’re writing something that sounds too much like something we’ve already
done before we kinda leave it behind. Of course, that doesn’t mean you’ll never do something that doesn’t sound like anything you’ve done before but we try very hard to surprise our fans and even ourselves. And when that happens, i can tell you, we couldn’t be happier!
– You have filmed a video for «Trip the Darkness», would you mind to share some light on it?
We received various treatment for the video and really liked what Sitcom Soldiers (the guys who directed the video) came up with. It shows the band performing in two different outfits (black and white), kind of “battling” each other. It could be seen as the eternal battle between light and dark/good and evil. The video was shot in Milan, our hometown, in just one day and although very tiring, it was great to see how it actually turned out. We really love it and i think it’s very polished and kinda “classy”…
– You have also done a cover for REM’s «Losing my Religion», which you have perfectly adapted it to your own style, something that seems difficult considering it has a really different style to yours. Why did you pick this concrete track? And are there any other songs you would like to cover?
I guess we’ve been thinking about doing Losing my Religion for a few years now. We really like the lyrics and we’ve always thought it would’ve been a great song to cover. It hasn’t been easy to re-arrange it but we’re very happy with the result. Our goal is to always turn someone else’s song into something that sounds like it could be one of our songs and i think that, so far, it always worked. I don’t know about other songs just yet but i think we’ll surely find some other song that will be a “perfect candidate”…
– This time you have worked again with producer Don Gilmore, I guess after his good work and your relationship with him that was just a natural thing to do?
Yes. We really enjoyed working with Don on Shallow Life and we though he’d be the perfect guy to get the best out of these new songs. He’s someone who never tells you what to do. He just knows what we’re good at and just pushes us in the right direction which is what a great producer should do.
– You’ve been active since 1996 and you have released all your records with a big label as Century Media. Do you think being always with such a strong label has helped you gaining success?
Absolutely. We’ve had a great relationship with Century Media and they’ve always given us the freedom to do what we thought was best.
– And you’ve been with the same line-up almost since your foundation; does this make things easier for the band?
It does. We’ve known each other for years and we know what buttons to push to get things done. It really helps after a while because you don’t really need to spend a lot of time explaining how things should be done since everyone gets it right away.
– Finally, what are your near-future plans? I know you will be next year touring the States but, can we expect seeing you in Spain anytime soon supporting this new «Dark Adrenaline»?
As i said before, we’ve only just started to plan stuff for the next year and i’m sure that we’ll be coming to Spain soon enough. At this time we don’t have any concrete plans but i can tell you that we’ll try as hard as possible to get our butts over there after the awesome reaction we had at Sonisphere in Madrid last summer!
– That is it, thanks once more for answering to our questions. If you now want to add some final words; last lines are all yours.
Thank you! We’re truly very excited about Dark Adrenaline and we can’t wait to be back on the road to give our fans more new stuff to put their hands on! See you out there!!!
