Late one night, you can’t sleep, you’re flicking through the channels and you see a nature documentary. It triggers something; thinking about time. Thinking about life cycles. Mayflies famously live for less than 12 hours. Some cicadas appear every 17 years. Both types of creatures start out as little wriggly larva and eventually become winged creatures and take flight. Then, changing the channel, you set upon the Great British Bake Off. While it could be the setup for some really revolting mixed-metaphors, it’s interesting because you can’t stop thinking about Lacuna Coil’s new album ‘Sleepless Empire’.
Lacuna Coil are a gothic metal band from Italy. Formed in 1994, they broke out with ‘Comalies’ in 2002 and regularly released records in what we will call the Classic period. Starting in roughly 2014 with ‘Broken Crown Halo’, they entered what we’ll call a Renaissance period, an era defined by albums with a heavier sound. This period ended in 2022 with ‘Comalies XX’, a rerecording of that breakout album.
With each album cycle, the band have reinvented themselves with new stage costumes and a new approach to their music. In effect, they shed their skins. This makes ‘Sleepless Empire’ the first record in a new era. However, what makes ‘Sleepless Empire’ such an interesting record is the ingredients. Just like making a cake, it isn’t just about what you put in, it’s a certain degree of magic. Indeed, it’s the Bake Off’s whole conceit, that changing a few things, and applying magic still leads to different results. Is a tricky record to talk about. It’s contradictory, and at odds with the band’s recent work. Imagine a chrysalis opening, you’re expecting a butterfly but what you get instead is a moth. It’s easy to mix up the two, but they’re both beautiful in different ways.
Musically, the guitars continue the renaissance era style, moving away from the kind of power metal style that defined their early work and towards a more muscular, djent-adjacent riffing. This has the advantage of making the songs sound powerful at the expense of more varied soundscapes. Here, the riffs on ‘Oxygen’ and ‘Sleep Paralysis‘ feel fresh and exciting, like the band is trying something new, and it’s working. Indeed, while the gothic tone shifts between albums, here it’s less obvious, making the overall tone slightly rougher. This also applies to the tag-team of vocalists Andrea Ferro and Christina Scabbia, whose work has a more feral edge so that even the biggest songs like ‘Gravity’ or ‘In The Mean Time’ have a scrappy, angry spirit.
The band’s secret ingredient has always been Scabbia. It’s difficult to understate how great a vocalist she is. Without wanting to undercut her talents, best way to describe her singing is “effortless.” If you’ve never seen her in a live setting, she has the ability to change styles and holds the songs together in a way that is simply astonishing. This means that the band’s work leans heavily on her shoulders and what makes ‘Sleepless Empire’ feel like a new era is how she’s using her voice.
The difference here is the emphasis. The songs are less powerful and almost understated and in many ways it feels to be missing the easy choruses and straightforward bangers that defines much of their work, even compared 2019’s ‘Black Anima’. That album flowed neatly between big songs like ‘Sword Of Anger’ or ‘Under The Surface’ but here there’s a strange half-baked feel to the choruses that gives it a very different energy. Notably, ‘In Nominae Patris’ and ‘Sleep Paralysis’ rise and fall in a way that makes them feel sluggish, however this appears to be a feature rather than a bug. Yes, the chorus melodies appear vague, but instead Scabbia focuses her attention on the verses. The results are absolutely striking.
Often, she’s trying new things like on ‘Scarecrow’ where she seems to be performing in opposition to be song’s rhythm to give the verses an aggressive tone. On the gothic ‘I Wish You Were Dead’, she sings almost solo in a style that feels fresh and distinctive, helped by the fact it’s a great song; powerful, with a slightly wicked edge. In fact, on every song she seems to unearth a new way to push her voice or grab your attention and that’s a real feat, especially ten albums into their career. As always, Ferro makes an engaging counterpoint. Indeed, what we’re calling the band’s renaissance period was defined by him switching from singing to powerful death growls and really earning his place. Continuing in that vein, he puts in effective work here, particularly on the title track and ‘Sleep Paralysis’ where his snarls and growls feel particularly filthy. It was perhaps unwise to offer Randy Blythe a guest spot on ‘Hosting The Shadow‘ as the two sound remarkably similar but he manages to hold his own. Similarly, it’s hard to say Ash Costello from New Years Day adds anything to ‘In The Mean Time’ but that’s only because Scabbia’s work is so startling.
Opener ‘The Siege’ provides the best example of the band’s new approach. It’s a slow-burning juggernaut that has a chorus you’d struggle to remember, let alone hum, and yet almost every word and phrase is stressed in strange or powerful ways. The result is a song that might not hook you in but feels threatening and bruising in a way their music rarely has before. In effect, their wings aren’t so streamlined but impressive nonetheless.
‘Sleepless Empire’ is the beginning of a new era for Lacuna Coil. The recipe is different, an unfamiliar taste lingers but the ingredients are undeniably potent.
IAN KENWORTHY