what ever has happened to lc when shallow life come out i think is ace, they seem to be enjoying it more live wise and just as a band. maybe trying new songs and changing all that they do has worked for them, personally after the last few gigs ive seen have been my best so far music wise and venue wise

It's interesting how they've infused the aggessive male/melodic female vocal dynamic more associated with metal into their current mainstream rock sound. I think that's what really sets them apart.

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Fenton Hollingsworth
1982-2009
R.I.P.

"I mourn for those who never knew you."

i didn't think to much was good about this album the first time i heard it, but i have grown to love it, somehow. its not as good as their older material, and personally i loved karmacode very much, and i refuse to believe it was in anyway a bad album, but with shallow life, i feel they came a little to close to making a dud.

a point needs to be made: some of my posts have seen me exclaim that i truly love this record. for a while, it seemed to me that i did, but the new style the group has with this doesn't linger in the heart the way i feel lacuna coil music should. its catchy, its fun in many places, and the vocals are very good.

but its BLAND! unleashed memories was not an instant fave. i didn't love comalies at all when i first heard it. i didn't GET karmacode either. but their was always something in the music that drew me to them again and again. shallow life, however, loses that mystic feel, that certain x-factor the group have always, until now, had. it goes straight into your system, with track after track of big vocals, huge choruses, and...short songs.

its limp. their is no senzafine, tightrope, un fantasma troi noi... not even a humane, veins of glass... nothing here makes me feel like i'm drowning in emotion, i don't feel the music. i don't really care, to be honest, after a few months. i like shallow life, the song i mean, for it has a certain feel that was last heard in cold heritage, one of my favourite songs. but the vocals of cristina, throughout this record, sound compressed. the last few bars of spellbound are the most obvious. when cristina chanted her way through karmacode, it was a natural instrument, it sounded like a real woman with feeling. she didn't need words to express emotion, just sounds. on shallow life, when she does chant (like on i'm not afraid, the maze) it sounds fake. its just a sound. no feeling. compare that to to live is to hide, you create/what i see or even the end of enjoy the silence, and you'll find its different, you get a cold shiver up your spine, like possession. her vocal range is shown on this record to good effect, but, like the music, it lacks soul. not enough comes close, but it still reverts back to the feel of instant grtification, chart-worthy catchiness. the song is short, its over before its begun, and the songs structure restricts itself from being a classic along the lines of entwined, halflife, or falling again, because its so glossy. i love lacuna coil, because from the debut ep to karmacode, they sounded raw. even karmacode, with its catchiness and commercial appeal, took big risks with its sound. it stomped, soared and was loud. cristina bared her soul in music without sounding like a disney princess. on this record, its just not good enough.

andrea, who i always have liked, sounded limp after such a vocal improvent on karmacode. within me was brilliant. fragile and fragments of faith saw him taking bigger melodies than ever before. i won't tell you, the maze, and survive find him sounding a bit out of place, shaky and what appears to be an attempt to gloss his vocals is just a really bad idea. he has a raw, husky voice, better suited to low sounds and deep roars, not singing pop-rock. his limited vocal range is used to bad effect, and the frequent use of him over cristina made this record sound even less masterful to me.

and yet i still find the time to love this record. i appreciate the resurgance of older sounds. musically, its more comalies, or unleashed memories. even the dancebeats don't particularly bother me (they appear on i won't tell you and i like it), for they experimented with trance and electronica to resounding effect on the brilliantly absorbing halflife ep, all the way back in 2000.

its just that the songwriting and musicianship is now leaning heavily towards the american way of doing things. one of the reasons i lov their music is that, although it was always catchy, it always had an epic, magical edge that was distinctly european (karmacode wasn't as strong in this respect, but it found a splendid balance between the old and the new, with without fear and invisible light sounding distinctly un-amarican). now, they jsut sound like americans with slightly awkward accents. only the bonus tracks truly show off the bands origins in atmospheric light metal.

surprisingly, though, i love i like it, and unchained, because they stand out especially as being different. unchained could have, if the production was a little rawer, been on halflife or comalies. i like it could have been an abba song, and i love that band (even though i don't frequently admit that in public!), and shows them playing happy music without sounding like linkin park-lite.

in short, i'm on the fence. i don't LOVE this record like a lover, i LOVE it like a distant relative. i have nothing really in common with it, just ties that bind deeper than the surface. this won't, i suspect, be on my player in 2015. but i do expect everything else to be. its not even a year, and i'm bored with it. its been nearly four years since karmacode and the rest came into my life, and i continually adore all those albums/ep's. this is fine, but it's just not the lacuna i grew to love.

sorry this has been so long. i just had to get these issues off my chest. i love lacuna coil very much, will continue to buy, and play, their music. but i can't see another classic on the horizon any time soon...

No need to apologize. Thanks for sharing your very personal feelings towards the album.

Shallow Life is the only album/EP I didn't buy by Lacuna Coil. I listened to the whole album a few times on Myspace when they had it up there for streaming then shortly gave up on the album. Months passed and I went to see LC live in NYC in September. To my surprise, I found myself singing along to most of the lyrics (which was rather strange since I had only listened to the album a few times on the week of its release). Now every once in a while I find myself humming a verse or a chorus melody from Shallow Life and I'm convinced now that it's time to actually give the album another shot. Regardless of the outcome, I know it will still be my least favorite thing LC ever did.

even if I still love LC, I have to completely agree with you... I think the same thing (except that I don't like Karmacode too much )
but even with that... Karmacode has some things that aren't in Shallow Life... for me, SL sounds like a different band... and I still hope that the LC we all knew for many years are still there...
even if not, I'm still liking their songs, just not as much as the songs in Comalies or Unleashed Memories (even if my Last.FM says the opposite... lol)

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Sorry for my bad English

The more I listen to Shallow Life, the more I start to think that the biggest difference is in the lyrics. The songs from their other albums, including Karmacode, feel more evocative, whereas the Shallow Life songs are more literal and descriptive.

Case in point, I tend to compare I Like It with My Wings. Unless I'm missing the point of the latter, to me they both deal with freeing onesself from things in life that are keeping us down and just taking off to do our own thing. I Like It even mentions "flying." However, the biggest difference is the literal descriptiveness in I Like It compared to the poetic imagery of My Wings. I Like It talks descriptively "there's nothing that can keep me on the ground," "I am getting ready to move on," "Everything is different today," etc. My wings starts right off talking about hovering like an angel, butterflies, and other things meant to evoke feelings rather than define actions.

I think this is why people have been mentioning a lack of emotional connection with the SL songs. They're not meant to stimulate the mind but more focused on conveying ideas directly.

That being said, this also makes the Shallow Life songs catchier and easier to sing along with. Mentally, we're connecting the lyrics with concrete, definable, and tangible ideas and images, rather than complex imagery that our minds have to make three or four different connections in order to understand. While the latter style adds depth to the songs, the simpler style is more direct and to the point, and the lyrics come out as a story or sequence that is easier to grasp rather than an abstract point that our brains need to filter, restructure, and translate.

As a personal preference, I prefer the more abstract and evocative lyrics. But like celticyodels said, the new songs really shine when performed live, and because the lyrics are simpler, they're easier to call to mind and have fun with. I'm hardly ever listening to the words at a concert, anyway; it's all about getting lost in the energy.

Anyway, there's my $.02

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Fenton Hollingsworth
1982-2009
R.I.P.

"I mourn for those who never knew you."

i'll admit this was a very interesting lyrical analysis.

can i just say something new that i've noticed? I'm Not Afraid actually reminds me a lot of Swamped and Heaven's a lie. its cristina's vocals, and the biting, sharp guitar sounds reminds me a lot of swamped as well!

also, i recently played swamped to a friend whose never heard of lacuna coil before, and her first thought was that it sounded like linkin park with a female singer! i don't get that comment, but perhaps the linkin park influence has been there all along, just subtler in the bands approach!

anyway, i'm gonna go back to unleashed memories and let you all ponder this, if you wish.

I like your two cents. ;D

I actually came up with thing. About My Wings (which isn't exactly one of my favourite songs) to Shallow Life as a whole. Not to say either is bad, but there is definitely a theme there.

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In Swamped (as in other of their songs) they reversed some parts of the music like in the beginning and Linkin Park also use this effect. I think their might be other elements that can be similar. But if they were influenced (which is possible because they've always like them)by LP at that time, I must say they did waaay better

Really now? What keeps me attached to Shallow Life are the older elements that shine in each song. If you ask me, I find redeeming qualities in nearly every song, and while I could probably write a paper on it; I'll try to be as to the point as possible:

In my opinion, Not Enough, The Pain, Wide Awake, and Shallow Life reminded me of pre-Karmacode LC, while Survive and Spellbound could've been standouts on Karmacode. I Like It feels like a lyrical fusion of Heaven's A Lie and My Wings, only more direct. The Maze and Unchained have amazing melodies buried underneath the guitars that would have been fitting of In A Reverie. The only songs on the album that don't readily strike me as "truly LC" are I Won't Tell You, Underdog, and I'm Not Afraid, all of which have their own strengths, the first being catchy as hell, the second utilizing LC's dual vocal style competently, and the third having some of the best drumming and guitarmanship (solos aside) on the album. And I don't have to defend the bonus songs; they stand tall on their own.

...However, that's just my opinion on the matter, and little else.

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All will kneel before the power of Comalies!

I can't help but notice how they've hijacked something from Left unfinished by Machine "Fucking" Head on Survive, the intro into the track sounds sooooo similar.

Playing both albums after the other, you can't help but notice how similar it truely is.

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I really just can't seem to find much similarities melodically between any song from SL and anything prior. I mean, "Oblivion" is the only song that I can really hear being on anything released before Karmacode....and of course thats a bonus track, so not everyone will enjoy that masterpiece. "Not Enough" is a valiant effort as well, and is really the only other song that I actually thoroughly enjoy from SL. Most of the other songs on this disc are good, for a band that I would casually listen to once in a while..but not Lacuna Coil. I expect more atmospheric, more deep and emotional connections to their music; after all thats what they've delivered wonderfully on every release until this one (not so much for Karmacode, but you get my drift). All in all, like I've stated in this thread, as well as others relating to Shallow Life, I don't dislike the album, and it is constantly battling Karmacode as my least favorite Lacuna Coil album. That's not to say I am not a fan though, because at the end of the day, despite the unfortunate lack of descriptive lyrics and less moody melodies, it's still a Lacuna Coil release, and because of the relationship I have developed with this band, I will refuse to give up on it, or them.

I've had the album now since it's release and I'm still not sure how I feel about it.

When I pull-up LC on my iPod, I always go for their older stuff first, then when I've run through that, THEN I put on "Shallow Life." I'm not sure if that's because it's new and I haven't really gotten into it yet, or if I really just don't like the album.

I do love some songs, I love "Spellbound," "Wide Awake," "Survive," "Unchained," and "Underdog," to name a few, but the album as a whole just doesn't grab me like their previous releases.

I was never a huge fan of Karmacode, but after listening to it again recently, I realized it wasn't as bad as I remember. So perhaps it's an issue with time. Or further, after finally seeing them live for the first time, and hearing a few songs from Karamcode live, it's changed how I feel about the song.

I agree that "Shallow Life," isn't as..."Lacuna Coil" as their earlier stuff, but at the same time...what do we want? The same album released year after year? In some ways, I don't mind that they change their sound a little and experiment. I guess all we can do now, is wait to see where their sound goes with the next album.