This is Emptyspiral’s 2nd interview with Lacuna Coil, this time at the Astoria in London on Saturday 27th December 2003. This was the first time I (Matt) met Andrea, and the first time I saw Lacuna Coil live. It would be another whole year before I got to meet the rest of the band.
Matt: On touring, how do you feel about the response you’ve received in America over the last few months?
Andrea: I think its excellent, actually America is becoming our main market at the moment, of course because its such a big place, with a lot of people, but we had a lot of attention with this album, especially really makes a difference, we moved to another step in America with this album and we still have a single on the radio. We had like eighty radio stations across the country playing the Heavens a Lie single and now they are going to release Swamped as the next single and we got a video on Headbangers Ball and Fuse, so we have improved a lot in that country. Only this year we have spent six months there, playing and doing promotions, we’re getting a lot of endorsements and…I like it a lot. We’ve had very good reaction.
Matt: Yea you’ve got a good fan-base over there.
Andrea: Yes, we also did, last month, a headline tour for the first time in America, a real tour, like a 5 weeks, and we had very good shows, sometime with more people, sometimes less, it depends also on the place, on the promotion, because we been a lot over there so. But it was very good, we had to play some radio station shows, like promoted by radio stations, and we had a lot of new people coming to the shows. I love it.
Matt: I know a lot of people have said that on some occasions there were only a couple of hundred people at the show, but they love that, ‘cause its obviously more intimate and you’re on a stage two foot high and not an arena a hundred foot away and a lot of people were really impressed with that…
Andrea: Yea, we did shows, with 900, shows with 600 hundred, shows with 200 hundred. Every kind of place, also some bars, or a sometime you move from a bar to a house of blues, beautiful with excellent sound, from a little tavern with shitty sound and drunk people looking at you! Ha! Its crazy, because you move everyday, you change. It’ really a different level.
Matt: A lot of people have asked when are you returning to the US, when are you going back there, when’s the next tour?
Andrea: Actually we want to see how the promotion is keep on going, how we reach also a bigger distribution and CDs on the Walmart, Target and K-Mart stores, all the big, huge, malls, and stores like that, so if the sales keep on growing and there is still some buzz, some interest around the band, then we can come back soon for a tour maybe in April, May, something like that.
Matt: OK.
Andrea: In the meantime we going to write the new stuff for the next album, I mean we all ready have some stuff, basically music, not really words, or lyrics. But we’re going to write the new stuff, then we see if something is still happening and there is a good chance of a good promotional support tour, we’ll come back, otherwise we want to come back next summer, maybe it would be great to do Ozzfest, or something like that.
Matt: Yea, theres been a lot of talk about Ozzfest…
Andrea: Yea. That’s the biggest thing you can do there. I mean for our level of band.
Matt: You said you played quite a few places in the US, what do you reckon was you’re favourite club, favourite place; the place you really love to go back to. With a great atmosphere…?
Andrea: Of course its always good when you play big cities. New York or LA., San Francisco. Its always very good. Its normally more people. But I like medium average, like 1500 type of capacity clubs, yea there are a lot. Or 2000, something like that.
Matt: A place like the Astoria.
Andrea: This size is good, because its got the decent sound and stage, and enough room to move because we move a lot on stage and its big, but its not that big so you still have some contact with the people, and its very important us to exchange energy with the audience otherwise its boring. So…I think that’s a good size. Of course it’s also nice to play arenas, with 20000 people (laughs) At the moment we love to play those sizes, also a small club could be very good it depends on the quality of the sound. Sometimes its too low, the PA is shit or the monitor situation is crazy and we are 6 on the stage so we need to have monitors enough for everybody. It’s a bit complicated to play small places.
Matt: You mentioned Swamped as the next track coming off the album…
Andrea: Yea, sort of single.
Matt: Do you think you’ll do a video like you did for Heavens a Lie?
Andrea: If it works as a single, maybe, why not. Yea! I have never talked about that but if it works it makes sense.
Matt: Its one of my favourite tracks of the album.
Andrea:Yea me too me too. My favourite songs I think are Heavens a Lie, Daylight Dancer and Swamped. I like all the album, don’t get me wrong. I like Entwined or Humane too. But still those are my favourites.
Matt: Would you ever consider taking requests from the crowd, at your live gigs. I would imagine that difficult as you have a set playlist anyway?
Andrea: The problem is that…its difficult because everybody has different tastes and everybody has a special song which is related to them a particular way for some reason and sometimes they ask for songs from the first EP or songs that we’ve never played live. I don’t know, maybe we can put a choice of songs, like we can put like four ballads and you can choose one. We can put 4 mid-tempo songs and you choose one, something like that we can do. We cannot play like 10 ballads. The concert is going to be very boring so we have to balance the situation, and actually basically we promote the new album with the touring. There’s always a big room for new songs especially because since this album works much better than the previous one, I mean not that the previous one was bad but was much more underground. With this album we move a little bit to the next sort of, the next level. So we have to play them, because most people know this album and not the previous one. We try to play a couple of tracks from In a Reverie in America on the last tour but it was really few people knowing the songs. I mean the very hard core fans they know it course, but most of the people they just know Unleashed to Comalies. Especially Comalies.
Matt: I would imagine a fan favourite at any of the concerts must be Senzafine…
Andrea: Yea yea. That’s…we can’t avoid it. (laughs) We play it every night. There are like 2, 3 songs that people love, like When a Dead Man Walks, Senzafine, and then there’s Swamped, Heavens a Lie, we have to play of course. And some other songs too. For example there’s not a big challenge between Cristina’s ballads, like some people prefer Falling some people prefer Purify, some people…another one. You can chose one or another one, people will like. The only one, I was surprised, they didn’t…they never ask about is The Ghost Woman and the Hunter from the last album.
Matt: They never ask for that?!?
Andrea: I mean it’s a good song, but I think the average of the album of the songs, the writing, is higher than the previous one so that song maybe is not that special compared to the previous album. Maybe Falling was more outstanding on Reverie than this song to Comalies, I think.
Matt: I think that if you had to chose four tracks off Comalies, then maybe The Ghost Woman and the Hunter wouldn’t be in those 4 tracks, buts its all relative. The whole album is brilliant, you know…?
Andrea: Yea, exactly. I think for example people prefer, ask more for Humane or Entwined than for Ghost Woman, no body asks about that. Maybe its just because the average is higher on the album.
Matt You’re here today, a single day in the UK. Any thoughts towards a UK tour? Or do you not think you’ve got the fanbase yet?
Andrea: Yea, we would love to do that actually. But we only play in London every time! (laughs) I mean, I love it, its very good because we have a lot of people and its always a good show, but maybe I think we should do more than one show. We only did one, we played Manchester I think, then we’ve been to Ireland, Belfast and Dublin, and London. That’s the only time…and Birmingham too I think. That was the Halflife EP so not many people knows about it!
Matt: Well your fan-base is definitely increasing in the UK, and there’s lots of people that want to see you…
Andrea: I think it will be possible. At the moment, I have to say that we concentrate a lot on the States, because there was something really happening, not that the record isn’t doing good also in Europe, very well, much better than the previous one, but still America is such a big market and we had to concentrate over there a lot. That’s only the second European tour and we did like 5 in America.
Matt: I guess that leads me onto…When are we going to see a Lacuna Coil World Tour!?!
Andrea: World Tour? Oh! Actually, this time after the American Tour we were supposed to go to Indonesia to play some shows, two shows, but we had to cancel, I think because of the terrorism stuff, because it’s a strong Muslim concentration there, so it could be dangerous meeting together all these people there for our show maybe somebody could have tried some stupid stuff. So…I hope to do that, I’d love to go to Japan, Australia, ah..everywhere actually. I would love to go. And we receive a lot of requests from South America, or Central America, and from East Europe too. I’d love to go to Russia, but its pretty tough because you never know about the…if you look at the sellings there, you don’t sell many records, but you receive thousands of mail, because there is a lot of bootlegs, and most of the people, they download, because its more…the economic situation isn’t really brilliant over there, so maybe you go there and you have 2000 people coming to the show and you sell 500 CDs no? So many promoters, especially in Europe, they won’t want to book you over there, because they don’t know what’s going on. And I’m sure that if we go over there we can have a lot of people, because we receive lots and lots of mail from Chile, Brazil, Argentina, everywhere, so I think there’s gonna be good.
Matt: You only have to look at the guest book on your site to see where people come from, it’s universal…
Andrea:Yea. Of course. Right now, its mostly from the States, just because we tour a lot over there so most of the mails now are from that country but we receive really from Israel to Korea, or Vietnam, India, everywhere. I mean the name of the band is known everywhere. We’re not selling millions of copies everywhere but… (laughs)
Matt: You said that you were going to start recording, working on the new album, soon…
Andrea: Work on it first yea. I mean like we have music for 9, 10 songs. But its basically only music ideas with some arrangements, not really, the structure of a final product, and me and Cristina, we still have to work on everything like vocal lines, and lyrics. It’s in the process. We never have masses of time, and we are not able to work on the songs on the road, I mean we’re always too wasted, too tired, or too lazy (laughs). And we need to stay on, sit down, work on the piece, go into the practise room, see if it works off alive, and then arrange all the stuff together, we need time. I mean not a long time, a little bit of time.
Matt: Its been mentioned before that maybe that will happen in March or May? Would that be about right?
Andrea: No. I think that if we can record for that time, like it depends, if we move the American tour and we have still have to see, but, the earliest it would come out for the Summer or the lastest maybe after, September. It depends on how much time it takes…
Matt: The CD cover for Comalies was done by a local artist in Milan…?
Andrea: No. The guy I think is from Australia…
Matt: Ok. Would you consider allowing fans submit ideas for the cover of the new album?
Andrea: What like Korn did? Why not? Its an idea actually. We think about it! (laughs) We have many fans that draw, especially in the States, they bring a lot of pictures of us like they did the band or of Cristina or tattoos from the band logo or one guy tattooed our autographs on the arms. I saw a girl with Cristina on the calf. There are a lot of creative people there that come to us with presents or… Not only Cristina. Of course most of the people concentrate on Cristina, but still, we receive a lot of presents for everybody. People loves the band. That’s really a big pleasure for us. People show a lot of respect for the band, I like it.
Matt: After Dubstar’s ‘Stars’ Would you consider any more cover songs?
Andrea: I think basically for live, not the records. I mean not at the moment.
Matt: So concentrate on a cover song for the live show…
Andrea: Actually we wanted to do a cover for this tour, but didn’t have time to. Wanted to do Sisters of Mercy’s Temple of Love. Yea it’s a classic. It can turn out good in two voices. Maybe we will do it but not for this tour, because its too late. We didn’t have time enough to prepare it and to practise as well.
Matt: That would be really cool. I’m sure its something the fans would love.
Andrea: Yea, live, why not, yes, not on the record, its not really necessary at the moment, we’re doing good with our songs. (laughs)
Matt: You toured with quite a few bands over the last 6 months, any bands that you’d really like to work with in the near future?
Andrea: Right now there is a tour that I would love to be the opening band for, and it’s Metallica and Godsmack.! That’s a great tour, I would love to open for that tour but I don’t think that’s gonna happen. I don’t know…actually, when we were in America we received a lot of contact from the management from big bands like Korn, Disturbed, those types of levels of bands, just, they were…not really interested but they were like searching, asking who is this band? How are they doing here? We just need to sell a little bit more copies in America to reach that level, which they say OK, we take you for opening up. They need a little warranty that you’ll bring enough people to the show, but we are close to that number, so with the next album we can do some opening for those levels of tours.
Matt: That would be cool…opening for Metallica!
Andrea: Yea. Actually, Lars…I think it’s true, they told me in America, Lars in an interview said that we are one of the most interesting new bands coming out and also Bruce Dickinson from Iron Maiden, he said the same on a radio. I’m sure about that because he said it to a radio station and we did an interview as well, like the day after and the DJ says – Oh, you know yesterday there was Bruce Dickinson here and he said that. It was very good. Good to hear it!
Matt: Yea, absolutely! These guys are idols…
Andrea: Yea! Actually, last summer, we played three festivals in which they were headlining so we met some of guys; Nicco and Adrian Smith, they were pretty cool guys and a lot of the crew we know already because we work with some of the guys like the drum tech, and we discovered that the guy who plays Eddie live is a fan of us. Eddie is a fan of us for sure! (laughs) That’s weird! He says ‘Hey you’re Lacuna Coil!’ and shakes your hand! Its pretty cool!
Matt: Maybe you can get him to do a cameo for you, come on stage.. Run around after Cristina!
Andrea: Yea! Exactly! He’s a very tall guy, wearing this big armour, whatever (Laughs) crazy…
Matt: There’s some Maiden fans on Emptyspiral, I’m sure they’ll love to hear that!
Andrea: That’s good.
Matt: You’ve mentioned that you’ve started working on some arrangements, but how does the song writing process work for you guys, I mean how do you put songs together?
Andrea: Basically, especially on the last two albums, Marco and Maus; guitar player and bass player, they write the music. To be honest we more or less all work together for the drum parts and Marco working a lot on the keyboard arrangements, and the vocal lines and melodies is mostly Cristina and me. All of the vocal lines are the two of us, and also the lyrics are the two of us. With the help of a girl from the states with the grammatics and with the expressions, just to be sure about it.
Matt: They’re very poetic songs, the lyrics are lovely, whether it’s a heavier song like Heavens a Lie or something like Purify…
Andrea: We try, we’re not born like poetics, or something like that. And its also tough to do it in another language, one that’s not yours but for the singing its much better to sing in English for us; is much easier to come out with English words, even if there’s not really sense together, but the sound is brilliant, so that’s why we basically write songs in English. But still, we like to approach everything step by step also on the lyrics side, in the first the lyrics were a bit cheesy or stupid because we were not able to elaborate complicated concepts in English. Right now we’re improving a lot, especially touring a lot of the States, having to talk in English, you learn the new ways to express views so…I think its getting better.
Matt: Do you think we’ll see more Italian songs like Senzafine and Comalies? People love them…
Andrea: The problem is that we can’t force it. It’s pretty tough writing a song in Italian, tougher than in English, so…Because everything sounds so stupid for us, sounds so normal, and so you have to choose carefully the words and the sound of the words and it doesn’t have to be a very heavy song because the Italian language is very good for melodic music but not really for powerful fast songs. So, it’s why we don’t want to force it. If it comes, we have nothing against it and we love to do it. But it tends to come spontaneously, and sometimes it’s tough. Like with Comalies, we had an English version for the verses and then we elaborate also in Italian, just to try something more particular because we wanted to put some more Italian stuff on the song, and we record both versions with an Italian and an English lyrics and then we see that Italian adds something to the song. So we say OK lets keep it. Otherwise if its not fitting, we don’t want to force it. Just because we are Italian we have to put an Italian song on, no. We wanna do it if it really turns out well, like means something.
(Matts Note: At this stage we moved the interview, because the testing of the backing track for to ‘Live is to Hide’ is soo LOUD I’m having trouble hearing Andrea – fortunately the mic is more than up to the task!) 🙂
Matt: Ok…What’s you’re biggest inspiration?
Andrea: Right no we are inspired by everything, like sound tracks, from movies, atmospheres, places. When we began of course we had these 2, 3, bands we love like Paradise Lost, Tiamat, Septic Flash, we was inspired by those bands…Type 0 Negative…So in the first album we really wanted to be the same, no? We wanted to go that way…But growing up, and step by step, and learning and being more open minded in our work, listening session or whatever, we’re really inspired by a lot of stuff, a lot of bands, a lot of types of music. There is not anymore a band that I say I want to be the next this or that…When we began I wanted to be the next Paradise Lost or next Type 0 Negative. Now we really want to find our own personality, really bad, that’s the thing we care most about, so we really like to be very open minded in the song writing and listening. So there is not one thing that really inspires us…beside Life, Experience or Taste.
Matt: Have you considered trying to set up a Street Team?
Andrea: Yea, actually they are trying to build one in America at the moment. I don’t know in Europe how it works with the street team…Its not that common in Europe. In America its easier because a lot of people already have a lot of experience in doing that, so its easier for sure. Here? I don’t know – Maybe! In America they are building one.
Matt: That’s good, I’ve heard the Century Media are going to do it…
Andrea: Yea. We need the help of them because we cannot like bring to promoting ourselves because it’s going to be too expensive for us. We need their help
Matt: The fans create their own stickers…
Andrea: Yea?!
Matt:…and give them out…
Andrea: That’s good! Yea we did just like a little flyer that you can download with the concert shows, but that’s all we did so far. We need to do more I think…
Matt: There are a number of musicians on Emptyspiral, inspired by yourselves and others. Have you considered putting the equipment you use on your website?
Andrea: Actually we never thought about it, but its absolutely possible, if you want I can tell you! (laughs) Its pretty easy. We have an endorsement now with ESP guitars, and we use the 7 strings Stephan Carpenter signature model, the guys from Deftones. We were basically looking for a 7 string guitar, we don’t really care if it’s one model or another. Now we’re gonna have some custom made I think, buts its gonna take a while, so at the moment we are using those models. Then we have Line 6 Amplifiers for guitars, with Marshall cabinets, basically that’s what we use live. In the studio we use Line 6 but also Angle and some other shitty stuff just to obtain this crappy sound you need sometimes for the small parts, like the small detail, with the weird dirty melodies. We like to play with the effects and experiment a little bit with the sounds, I mean we don’t have much time to do that because we record a full album in a month, including the mixing, so we can’t really experiment a lot, but basically we try some little things on the guitars. In the studio we use some direct line imput, no speakers, just the cabinets – direct. And we have also a Line 6 Rock version amplifier. Drums…we have Drum Sound, which is a DW Drum Workshop Italian version something like that. Cymbals; we got an Italian hand-made brand and Bigfoot sticks. Now Criz has his own model on Bigfoot. For the mics we use studio mics and live we use Shure mics. Its nothing really special. And we use 5 strings ESP bass. Oh and a minidisk for the keyboards. We have a sampler and keyboards with a minidisk. Criz is playing with Click, with the tracks, with the drum readings, just to synchronise with the keyboards.
Matt. Cool, thanks very much! Are you happy with the level of promotion you’ve received from Century Media?
Andrea: Yes. Especially with the last album, I think they did a good job. I mean they are not a major label, so you have to compare the promotion with the label of course. But I think they did a pretty good job, also with the video…We have it on rotation in many TVs which is not really common for a heavy rock band. So, I think…of course it could always be better, because you can have more money to spend but considering the budget at the type of level with which we are, I think its good. They do a good job for us.
Matt: You mentioned that your biggest market at the moment is the US…
Andrea: At the moment, yes.
Matt: Would you consider moving to the US at all?
Andrea: No. Actually many people think that we are from the States, we are like half-Italian, half-American! They think that we live in Brooklyn – ‘Oh you going back to New Jersey or Brooklyn?’ No No, we’re going back to Italy, and they don’t realise that we fly back all the time! They think we are America-Italian, but we are not, No No, the food is too good in Italy to move to the States. No that I don’t like the food in the States, but I prefer Italian food. (laughs) No, we have all our families here… Maybe we can move there for a while, not really moving…If we make some big money, maybe we can buy a house and have two houses. Sometimes stay there, sometimes stay here.
Matt: Superstar status!
Andrea: (laughs)
Matt: One of the things that comes up a lot, is what you did before the band, before Lacuna Coil…?
Andrea: The jobs you mean? Everybody did loads of different stuff, like Marco was a chief in a restaurant, I was doing a lot of different jobs; I worked for a courier, I worked for a record label sometimes, I worked for banks sometimes. A lot of different stuff. All of us…we always had part-time jobs, cause when we start working, then we had to balance it with the band, and you do not have much time to stay home, and you cannot say to a regular job ‘Hey I’m going around for three months’ You can’t have three months of holiday in a regular job so, we always had part-time stuff. Cristina worked in a pub sometimes, I worked as a DJ also in a metal pub sometimes. Its just little jobs you know? You had to take what you can get, because you arrive home and you say OK, I’m available for two months, what can I do in two months? You can’t have an office job or a bank job or something like.
Matt: Do you still do those jobs or…?
Andrea: No, since one year, we are not doing anything else besides Lacuna Coil, because we are able to survive, because we don’t have time to do anything else. (laughs)
(Matt’s note: At this point I was little distracted from asking my next question because the intro to Cold Heritage came on in the sound test. A bit of a teaser for the show later! I soon recovered though.)
Matt: You’ve been very popular with the radio stations playing Heavens a Lie in the States. Is that something you want to expand on, given the opportunity?
Andrea: Of course. But I think that the states worked very well because they got a lot of Rock radio stations. Like in Italy for example we have one main rock station which you can hear in 5 or 6 big cities in the north of Italy, so it’s not really big as in America. I mean, it’s big in Milan, but that’s all. In Europe its more tough, we don’t have the same amount of rock radio stations, like every city in the States has a rock radio station, so here its more tough to go in the direction of the radio show. In America for sure!
Matt: DVD? When will we see a Lacuna Coil concert DVD?
Andrea: Yea, we will do that. I don’t know when right now, I’m collecting a lot of stuff with my digital camera, just back stage or some live stuff, but we need to film a show in a professional way, like from different cameras, and we never did that so far. Why not!? I don’t know when right now. For sure there will be another CD ROM track on the next album like the one we did for Comalies. Maybe this time we will not concentrate on the studio work, but more on the live, maybe some back stage, some special appearance, some radio station stuff. I collect a lot of stuff. I have like 20 tapes at home, 20 hours of stuff. I’m still collecting stuff from this tour so, me and Marco will sit down on the PC and put everything on the PC then chose the funny things and the nice things, and the curious things. There will be a CD ROM track, that’s for sure!
Its nice to give some extra stuff, we just need time to do that, to work on it…
Matt: Have you heard of the Lacuna Coil cover band?
Andrea: I’ve heard of several bands. I only have heard one song, this song playing now ‘Cold Heritage’ from a Spanish band. But that’s the only thing I’ve heard. I know that there are bands that have both vocalists, they both sound like us, but I never really heard.
Matt: It must be quite a good feeling to know that there are people out there…
Andrea: Yea Yea its crazy. Sometimes at the concerts, people say ‘We opened a show with Swamped’ or ‘We opened a show with…’ Because maybe they do some more than, not only Lacuna Coil covers. Its good to hear! (laughs)
Matt: Where would you like to be a year from now – at the end of 2004?
Andrea: I’m pretty sure we’ll be on tour! (laughs all round) I don’t know where but on tour! No…I gotta a lot of hope for the next album because I’ve seen an improvement in the band every album so far so I still think we can improve a lot. I can improve as a singer, we can improve as songwriters, can have a better sound, better mixing. I still see a lot of potential, we are not at the point where we say OK, we should do another Comalies. We should do a better Comalies now. Not change the style, I think we’ve found a little bit of our style but even progress with the songwriting, with the quality of the material.
Matt: Do you think there’s ever any pressure on you to ‘commercialise’ what you’ve got on Comalies?
Andrea: No, not really no. The only pressure now of course that we have a hit single on the radio and video, you think, we should have another Heavens a Lie, I mean not exactly the same but another song with the same potential. But I don’t think it’s possible to plan something like that. I mean not for us that least, because…it will just sound stupid. That song came out spontaneously, so we cannot fake spontaneously, we can’t do that. I think we will concentrate basically on writing better songs and maybe one will be a next single. It is impossible, to write, for us at least, the same song; this is the structure, here I put the piano here, here I put the Cristina voice here, here I put the Andrea voice…It’s not easy, more difficult just trying to write a better song. It’s easy to write different songs and try to have a good one, to use it as a single.
Matt: We’ve heard Cristina sing songs on her own…have you ever considered just you singing on a song, on a ballad…?
Andrea: Yea, we thought about it, but I think we need the right song to do that. I don’t wanna do a song by myself just to do it, to balance all Cristinas. No I think we have two very different voices. She can use her voice in a beautiful way, and she can hit very high notes. I’m more the powerful singer, more for the heavy parts, and sometimes I can go deep. It’s a very different style. And Cristina has a huge natural talent for singing. She never took any lessons, its completely natural talent, which I have to say that I’ve heard from very few singers we’ve toured with or I’ve seen live. I didn’t see many talented singers as her. Maybe John from Anthrax; John Bush. I feel he is as good a Cristina, in a completely different voice of course, but gets the same natural feelings and talent, as Cristina. So for me sometimes it’s also hard to be at the same level as Cristina, because she’s such a natural. You can do nothing about it, she’s natural, it’s not that she’s studied more than me, it’s just a question of natural way of being. And..I’m good at doing what I do, I can’t do what Cristina does…
Matt: I think that the ‘sound’ of Lacuna Coil is the way your two voices compliment each other.
Andrea: Yea.
Matt: It’s a simple as that.
Andrea: I also took some lessons for Comalies, and I will take some more lessons because I would like to use my voice in a different way, not only screaming or growling. Would like to use it more…when it fits screaming, when it fits growling, when it fits singng. And I want to improve that side of course. I’m…not in a hurry. I don’t want to do a song by myself just to say … ‘I have to sing…she sings tenor so I have to sing tenor. We never think in these terms. We always think in the best way for the album, for the songs. In Daylight Dancer, I sing maybe 80 percent, and Cristina 20, and it’s OK. In Swamped it’s the opposite way, or like 60 and 40, whatever. We never think it has to be 50 percent. No. If the song fits with the 80 and 20, it fits! What can we do about it? The song is like that and its good like that. It’s not a competition for us, the music, its something we like to do. When my vocals fit, I’m more than happy to put my vocals, when my vocals doesn’t fit, it doesn’t fit! No other point for us. Its not like we have to put a lead guitar because we have two guitar players…No. If the lead guitar is not necessary in the song, we don’t put it…That just doesn’t make sense. So, maybe one day I will do a song alone, maybe also in the next album, I don’t know because we didn’t consider it yet. But I don’t wanna force it, I want it to come natural. Then I can sing a song that is really good for my voice. Not that I sing like a Death Metal song just because I’m good in screaming. No. It has to fit with the Lacuna Coil music first, then it’s a pleasure if I can do it. I’m more than happy.
Matt: Song for a movie? Do you think it will happen?
Andrea: Actually, they contacted us, not to be in the soundtrack, but to be in the movie, as actors…
Matt: Really!
Andrea: In America, in New York, a guy from a big production came to the show in Irving Plaza, when we played with Type-0, and he offered us…Cristina should say, like two words in the film, and we all should be background people, like walking around with the bad guy, something like that. But so far we don’t have any news about it. It was just a preliminary…talk. At the moment we would love to do a soundtrack or to have a song in a soundtrack because we really love the cinema and movies a lot. Last tour I hundreds of movies at least. I’m always watching movies and we’re very inspired by TV and mostly movies. It would be great…
Matt: We’re nearly finished now…
Andrea: No problem!
Matt: The original band line-up for Lacuna Coil was different than it is now…
Andrea: Yes, half of it yea.
Matt: Do you still keep in contact with the guys…?
Andrea: Actually I’m in very good contact with Claudio, one of the guitar players, he’s got a new band called ‘No Names’ It’s a weird name but we like it, and I’ve been in the studio with him, listening to the new stuff they are doing, its pretty good. I don’t know if you know HIM? The Finnish band, it could be something that way, a bit heavier, with a male vocals, pretty good. I like the stuff I heard. I always liked Claudio a lot, we’ve always been in good contact. We had some problems of course at that time, but it was mostly for different reasons, we never had musical conflicts like with the others, we had musical conflicts with them, especially on the studio time for the first EP. We had a big clash already in the studio. I’m more than happy to help Claudio, they will open for us in Italy, I’m sure if they want. I’m happy about it, he’s a true musician, and he’s a nice person too. With the other guys, I still talk with Leonardo sometimes on the phone, we chat, Hi, Bye, have a beer, that’s all. With Claudio we also talk about to have a side project like something completely different; something Extreme…Maybe we will do it someday…But I don’t have anytime right now. And I concentrate more on progressing my vocals for Lacuna Coil first, then if I have time, I’ll do something else. Our time is mostly for Lacuna Coil.
Matt: Last question…What would you say your most embarrassing moment on stage as been? Yours or the bands in general.
Andrea: Oh…we have so many! Yesterday night (26/12/03) for example, during Senzafine my mic cable came out and I couldn’t sing, and when I had to scream, Madre… The first chorus?… I miss it because everyone’s there, they’re trying fix it! At sometime, Cristina once hit the mic stand and got a blood mask…(indicates his face).
Matt: They probably thought it was part of the show!
Andrea: Yea! Everybody was scared because she has this blood mask (we’re both trying not to laugh, and failing) Sometimes, its some stupid thing. Sometimes you say something wrong in English, or when you try to talk in another language, like French, or Spanish and you do some stupid mistake. Nothing really bad. I had a problem once in Dublin, I think…No, Belfast. I had a dislocation of my shoulder, I had an accident when I used to skate, long time ago now and I still have this problem with the dislocation sometimes. So I fell on stage and dislocated my shoulder on stage! So I sing like three sons with a shoulder out of the shell and then I had to go to the hospital, because I couldn’t take the pain anymore (laughs). That was also a bit embarrassing. But we did it in the end, we always try to end the show…alive! (laughs)
Matt: Well I’ve come to the end of my questions, and thank you for talking to me today.
Andrea: No problem, thank you!
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