Matts Interview with Andrea, Criz and Marco / 6th March 2006
When I sat down, in the Devonshire Arms in Camden, with half of a very excited Lacuna Coil, I knew that this was probably going to be a chaotic interview. Sure, I had the questions I wanted to ask, but had been told I didn’t have much time, and was mentally reviewing them and attempting to cut some out. The three men sitting in front from me, Andrea (Ferro), ‘Criz’ (Cristiano Mozzati) and Marco (Coti Zelati) looked excited – especially as they had put on a masterful show the night before (and I suspect had got to bed late, or is that early…), but also a little weary. They had another photo-shoot lined up and a beer and a chat was the closed thing they had to a ‘rest’.
I myself had just listened to ‘Karmacode’ and was also excited and anxious to talk to the band about it. Of course, Lacuna Coil are no ordinary band and, after all the times I had interviewed them in the past, I really shouldn’t have been surprised that this would be no ordinary interview.
So, questions in hand, I thought I would start by asking them to introduce the new album…
Matt: So, how would you introduce ‘Karmacode’ to a new listener?
Criz: The new ‘Karmacode’ is basically a step further from ‘Comalies’, it’s not a new ‘Comalies’. It’s a complete new work that includes some influences that we had from our eleven months of touring in the US and also our European roots. So basically it’s a mixture, a new kind of big sound, and our typical melodies, like you know – the voices, the structure of the songs…
Marco: The Mediterranean style.
Criz: Yeah.
Andrea: We’ve taken Comalies as a starting point and then we just tried to add the new elements that we have collected in the past year of touring. Like for example from the American metal of the bass sound, the groovier part of the songs.
Marco: The rhythmical parts…
Andrea: The seven string guitars on the song writing. So that’s kinda heavy in a way but it’s also very fluid in the structure of the songs and in the melody – of the vocals especially, and the keyboards. It’s a mixture. Also for the first time we have used real strings like violins and cellos, and there are some Mediterranean and Arabic kind of vocals from Cristina in most of the vocals. In general we’ve worked a lot with the harmony of the two voices; more than in the past.
I had certainly recognised the Mediterranean and Arabic sounds in the vocals on the album and also agreed that ‘Karmacode’ was an evolution of ‘Comalies’. In fact it is probably Lacuna Coil’s most accessible album to date. But did that make it ‘mainstream’. It was time to ask.
Matt: What do you think the term ‘mainstream’ means to you? People talk about mainstream a lot, and what would you say to people that say that ‘Karmacode’ is more ‘mainstream’ than ‘Comalies’ or ‘Unleashed Memories’. Is that a good thing or a bad thing to you?
Marco: I think it is a good thing, because maybe it’s more mainstream but its not made that way on purpose.
Criz. I think the point is that metal fans like it when it’s underground. They want metal to explode in the world, but still they like it when it’s just underground. It’s kind of crazy you know? Basically I don’t keep ‘mainstream’ and ‘commercial’ together. You can be metal and you can be in the mainstream. Take Korn for example. They are metal, they have their own style, but it’s not commercial. There were people that as soon as ‘Comalies’ came out they were so happy but as soon as ‘Comalies’ sold 500,000 copies they say that we became commercial. It’s the same album!
Andi: I never think we’ve been a super heavy band that you can consider underground. Even in the first EP there were a lot of melodies and a pop kind of sound. We’ve never had a problem with being too melodic, too easy-listening, because we’re always like that. Something like ‘No need to explain’ is more mainstream that something off of ‘Karmacode’.
Marco: Yes, true. ‘Heavens’s a Lie’ as well is more mainstream.
Andi: We’ve always been very open minded and our style of music is influenced by all kinds of music and we’ve never really had the problem of a black metal band that cannot sing in a clean way, that cannot do the keyboards because it’s ‘too commercial’.
Criz: We don’t do cliché. We just write our music as it comes…
Andi. Of we like it when people like our music and if we can sell more copies, its fine because we live out of the band – our job is also to sell records. But we don’t write records only to sell records. That’s the difference between us and a band like Five or Blue or whatever. They write music to sell records. We write music because we like it.
Criz: If you sell sandwiches and you sell 10 sandwiches a day you want to sell 1000 sandwiches a day, it’s the same thing.
Andi: So we try to sell very good sandwiches and not very cheap sandwiches.
Matt: Not necessarily the popular sandwiches, but the good sandwiches…
Andi: Right!
I’d definitely agree that Karmacode is a good ‘sandwich’ and it was obvious that the band are proud of what they have created. What was also obvious was that people were going to have a problem categorising the sound of the album and the Lacuna Coil are further away from the ‘Italian Goth Metallers’ tag than they ever had been..
Matt: In the past the press has tended to categorise you as ‘Goth metal’, do you think that ‘Karmacode’ has moved beyond that style?
Criz: We never felt so Gothic or so Metal. We just write our songs and it’s always the journalists that need to put us in a strict category. They say ‘this is a gothic metal band’, or ‘this is a nu-metal band’.
Marco: We have just the atmosphere. There are more gothic than happy parts. But it’s not ‘Goth’ music.
Matt: Nobody could say that ‘Closer’ is goth…
Marco: Yeah, that’s right. For me for example, even ‘Follow the Leader’ from Korn is gothic.
Criz: Rammstein is gothic.
Marco: Rammstein IS gothic. But they don’t play goth metal. That’s the point.
Andi: At the beginning of our career, we were inspired by bands like Paradise Lost and Type 0 Negative. and Tiamat which were more in the goth metal kind of sound. We were on a label that had a lot of the goth metal bands, like Moonspell or The Gathering or Samael. Growing up we moved a little bit from that scene and we have always been more and more inspired by other kinds of music, so now we are a mixture of rock, metal, and sometimes goth with some atmospheres of the music. We aren’t straight and only a goth, or only a metal kind of band.
This was certainly the feeling I was getting now from the sound and style of Lacuna Coil. Speaking of the style, one thing that had surprised most fans, and even disappointed some, was the striking cover art of ‘Karmacode’. It was certainly a departure from the previous style. I was wondering how that happened…
Matt: The artistic approach to the ‘Karmacode’ album has been very different from your previous works. How did that come about and how does the cover art reflect the album itself?
Criz: The cover I think reflects for sure the meaning of ‘Karmacode’. So basically you see this human face that is totally human…
Marco suddenly grins at me and points.
Marco: It’s him!
There’s laughter all around, myself include. Well I certainly have the bald head for it!
Criz: It looks like you actually yeah!
The three of them sit across from me grinning.
Matt: Oh No…
Criz (still grinning): Behind this face, it’s not just human but also the machine things going one. That’s the concept, not really concept, though it’s not a real concept album.
Matt: The theme?
Criz: Yes the theme…
Andi: For the first time. We have artwork which is made out of the concept. When I created the word ‘Karmacode’ I gave an explanation of the concept of the idea, and the approach to the lyrics. We gave this concept to Asterik Studio who made the artwork and we gave some early demos of the songs. So for the first time somebody listened to the music and read the ideas and give us their own interpretation in three different choices and we took the one that was more adapt to the album. Actually you really need to see the complete book to better understand what the work is about. If you only see the front picture of the cover you don’t really get to understand the cover. Because, for example, the face is taken off and there is a hole in the first page of the booklet and you will see the bandages going through the machinery and the explanation of the concept is there. Also inside the booklet there will be some very cold colours, the technical side which is the ‘code’ and in the pictures there will be some very warm colours which are the ‘karma’. So you need to see the complete thing to understand how the booklet is working. This is truly the first time we have something like this, and the past it was always nice pictures that can deal with the music and the title of the album but that’s it.
Ok, now it was all making sense, and I could understand the vision behind the album and the cover. It was a bold move in an industry with so much shallowness, but then, Lacuna Coil had never been shallow and or complied with what is considered the norm. They had spent nearly ten years writing their own kind of music in their own way.
Matt: I do think it will work on those levels. And when you see it in the shops it will stand out…
Criz. Did you like the cover?
Uh oh! Now I was being asked the questions! Had I really lost control of the interview so quickly? As for the question, did I like the cover? I’d never really given it any thought and it was so different from everything they had done before and had certainly come as a surprise. The cover itself was a challenge to question what lay inside. Knowing what did lay within I knew now that I did like the cover, and I understood what it was trying to achieve. I liked it.
Matt: Yes. It stands out! You go into the metal category in a shop and you see dragons and…
Marco: That’s true!
Matt. They all blur into one… What you’ve got is a distinctive cover.
Andi. Maybe it’s less pretty than the previous covers. At first sight it’s not as pretty as ‘Comalies’ but it’s more connected….
Marco: It looks different. If people see it, maybe they will hear Lacuna Coil.
Criz: We’ve always had the round thing in the past. But also with the website, we’ve created a new story, a new step.
Andi: We don’t like to repeat ourselves.
Of course, something about the numbers was bugging me so…
Matt: What about the numbers?
They all grin at me!
Andi: Ah… That’s a secret Matt!
Criz: We can’t tell you…
This? And 1.19? Where did it end? Was Lacuna Coil secretly laughing at all of us as we try to work it out? Looking at the three grinning men opposite me, I knew the answer.
Matt: So many things you can’t tell me!
Andi (grinning): Maybe you can try to dial it on the phone…
More laughter, though it was what I had considered in jest –
Matt: I thought it was a pasta takeout in Milan or something!
That got a laugh from everyone, but I was left feeling that there was another big secret and I was not part to it.
Criz. We also have a thing with numbers. Like 1.19…
Great! My chance to pounce!
Matt: Are you guys ever going to tell me what that means?!?!
Marco: What? 1.19?
Criz: No.
Marco: Never.
Matt (resigned to failure): Ok we’ll move on…
More laughter from the across the table.
Matt: I will keep asking you though…
Marco. Even for you, sorry Matt.
Damn. One day. I promise. One day…
So, they had an album that they were proud of, but what part really satisfied them personally…?
Matt. Ok what’s your favourite song, or part of a song off the album?
Marco: All the songs.
Criz: All the songs.
Marco: All the songs in different ways . My favourite favourite favourite favourite favourite….
Criz (Giving Marco a long stare): You have to think about it. Come on! You don’t know it!
Marco: Hmm Yes…I really like ‘Our Truth’. Maybe it’s ‘Fragile’ – the first song off the album. But, I don’t know actually. I love all the songs off the album. In their different moods in different ways, I love all the songs.
Andi (smirking): I think ‘Nothing Else Matters’ in the one that really stands out…
Laughter all round. Though I couldn’t shake this feeling that this was a private joke and had come up before.
Criz: For sure!
Marco: For sure.
More laughter. Though I must admit, it was proving very infectious. That’s the thing, they are enjoying themselves and you can’t help but it enjoy it with them.
Marco: It’s not so easy. On ‘Comalies’, if you ask me this question, I say ‘Daylight Dancer’ I know this.
Andi: But for this one it’s harder. We really had the time in production to work on every song. We had almost a month for the mixing so we did two days for every song. In the past we used to do one week, ten days, for the whole album, which means two, three songs a day, which is not good for the quality of course. Every song now has the sound we wanted to reach and you can really hear the quality of every song.
Marco: Maybe if you ask the opposite question. Which is the last song you like off the album. I say to you – ‘Closer’. But, not because I don’t like that song, especially playing it live…
They had played Closer the night before and I remembered it clearly.
Matt: Brilliant!
Criz(smiling): So 80s!
Marco: We play it yesterday-
The only way I could illustrate the effect ‘Closer’ had one me the previous night was to start dancing in my seat. So that’s what I did.
Marco: Yeah Yeah! When you listen to the album you have a kind of atmosphere, but when ‘Closer’ comes you feel happy! Starts to sing!
And he does! La la la la…
Marco: Usually I switch the song but, anyway this is my personal thing. But during the live show its great, I love it.
And it’s obvious Marco does. He is passionate about the music and I also remember his guitar-playing during the song.
Matt (making an outrageous air-guitar): I saw you!
Marco (laughing): YEAH YEAH!. Probably from yesterday I’ve changed my opinion about that song. I love that song live, but…
Andi: Not too much on the album. Actually that is the first song that Marco created, so that is the oldest song on the album and it’s probably the one with the most positive message, lyrically wise. It’s full of hope and that’s something different from the past. It’s not that we’ve turned into a ‘happy-metal’ kind of a band but it has a different message from the past where we were more depressed or melancholy on every song. Now you can feel a more positive message.
Criz: It’s really 80s and dark. We love it.
To be honest, I’d completely forgotten I hadn’t got everyone’s opinion on their favourite songs, beyond ‘all of them’, so I launched into another question. I knew from a previous interview with Andrea that Lacuna Coil had recorded more songs than were on ‘Karmacod’e and, like any fan, I wanted to know whether we were going to get a chance to hear them.
Matt: You recorded more songs then you put on the album…
Andi: Three more…
Matt: How did you decide which songs go on the album?
Marco: We decided to make the album straight and to the point. That was the main reason. First because the three other songs we have, two are more gothic, more old style.
Andi: Slower songs.
Criz: One is more heavy.
Marco: That one is the most heavy we have had in our career. But we don’t have the vocal lines. It’s already recorded.
Ok. That got my attention. The heaviest song in Lacuna Coil’s career? I really hoped that it would be released at some point.
Andi: We have to record the vocals and mix. We didn’t have enough time.
Marco: We decided to make the album more straight and to the point. We also had a different slow song, we have the Italian one…
Andi: There are basically three slow songs on the album, all very different to each other. One is ‘Within Me’, which is a semi-acoustic ballad.
Marco: Right.
Andi: The other is ‘Without Fear’, with Italian lyrics. It’s very different with all clean guitars, an accordion, and some special instruments. The other one is ‘In Visible Light’.
Marco: That is gothic and dark but modern at the same time. So that would fit better on the album. With thirteen songs, 12 actually without the cover, I think three slow songs are enough. Definitely.
I was wondering what these three songs were called. I knew that ‘Without A Reason’ was due for release on the single of ‘Our Truth’
Matt: You’ve got ‘Without A Reason’..?
Andi: Yes. ‘Without A Reason’ and ‘Virtual Environment’. We just picked up that title last week…
Marco looks across at Andrea and starts laughing.
Marco: Actually that is news to me, I didn’t know!
There’s more laughter around the table.
Andi: The two songs, they could both fit in ‘Unleashed Memories’, for the mood of the songs. The sound is bigger and better quality.
Criz: ‘Karmacode’ style.
Andi: It’s in between, like ‘Humane’, ‘Entwined’, ‘Distant Sun’. Those kind of typical Lacuna Coil slow songs.
Songs that could go onto Unleashed Memories? Fascinating! It was clear to me now that Lacuna Coil identified different aspects of their music with the different albums they had released. Considering that ‘Karmacode’ has been recorded over the course of a year or more I wondered if this evolution of style had occurred during that time.
Matt: Were there any songs that changed during the recording process?
Andi: We always improvise a lot, especially on the vocals. When we were in the studio, we changed them a lot of times. We keep the basic lines there but we always try some different arrangements. Maybe the verse is going to be like this, but the chorus… we always add melodies and different keys because I try very high keys or low keys, so we can never tell how it’s going to sound in the end. Especially this time as we did the recording in two different sessions. We did the first session with five or six songs then we sent the demo to some producers to see whose gonna mix the album, and then we complete the second session, and also some of the songs from the first session had no vocals at that time, so we just worked the vocals through in between the summer festivals we did last year. So the process has been different from the past.
Criz: Some songs we’ve had for a year and we had to change them because we also changed as people. Like, we were more experienced. That’s also another kind of process; you have to make them different you know?
Marco: When you listen for example to ‘Devoted’, that was the first step after ‘Comalies’. Or ‘Closer’ as well. And after that we continued touring in the US, doing more festivals, so we changed. We grew up with the music.
Matt: So you’ve not only evolved with the passage from ‘Comalies’ to ‘Karmacode’, you’ve also evolved within making ‘Karmacode’.
Marco: It was evolution! Yeah.
Andi: We were listening to the first recording session and decided if it was a direction that was fine with us, and we were. A 100 percent behind the direction we were taking. Because it can be a risk sometimes to change, but then we sit down and say it’s simply not honest to not do it. If we don’t do it, if we just try to repeat ‘Comalies’, it would have been very far from what we are. We couldn’t afford to go on stage and play songs that we don’t believe in. For us it’s better to take a little risk and make a little different sound and see if people are going to follow us than to just re-write ‘Comalies’ – ‘Heaven’s a Lie’ or ‘Swamped’ for the sake of it, and not be happy about it.
Criz (smiling): We’re sick of ‘Swamped’ (laughs) and ‘Heavens a Lie!’
Andi: We want to support the album for at least two years of touring. You can’t play for two years songs you don’t believe in. It’s already hard to play songs you do believe in for 2 years!
Andrea laughs, and I realise just what a relief being able to sing new songs is for him.
Criz: You play the same songs every day, even if you love the songs, it’s just in your head you know.
Matt: It must be good to be about to go out and play the new songs – ‘Devoted’ and ‘To the Edge’ and ‘Fragments of Faith’…
Criz: Of course. It’s more of a motivation.
Marco smiles at me, picking up on the songs I’ve just mentioned, and possibly the enthusiasm in the way I’ve mentioned them.
Marco: You like ‘Fragments of Faith’?
Easy question. I thought ‘Fragments of Faith’ was excellent.
Matt: Yeah!
Criz: Really?
Matt: Definitely! I’ve listened to the album twice – obviously some of it last night…
Damn. I’m starting to loose control of this interview again. Criz snatches away what I have left.
Criz (smirking): Ok now we interview you! So which is the song YOU like most?
Now the interview has taking a strange turn. Lacuna Coil are asking me what my favourite song is off ‘Karmacode’, an album that I had listened to properly once only. I thought back over the last hour and what notes I had written down during listening to each song. Which song, off all of them made me react the most. The problem is that they were all good. The band had pulled off an album with no weak songs on it. It was not an easy question, and I think Criz knew that. I answered as honestly as I could:
Matt: ‘Fragments of Faith’.
Criz: WHY?!
Ouch! Now you’re being mean Criz! To ask me what my favourite song is, is one thing. But to then ask me to explain myself…
So that’s what I had to do. Examine why I liked ‘Fragments of Faith’, consider what made it a great song to me…
Matt: Because it has everything that makes you a great band. It’s got great bass, really distinctive melody, Andi doing great growling reminding me of the days of ‘In A Reverie’, it’s got Cristina singing the vocal range that makes Cristina the special singer she is. That to me is what Lacuna Coil is all about.
Marco looked at me with genuine warmness at that point.
Marco(smiling): I agree with you Matt.
I was hoping for a respite, but Criz was not giving up his role of interrogator.
Criz: Did you like show yesterday?
Ok. That was an easy one.
Matt: Fantastic.
Marco: Did you see the difference between from when we played the old songs and the new ones? On stage…?
Did I? Did they look uncomfortable or unpractised with the new songs? Were they unpolished? Last night was, after all, the first time the band had played them to a large audience. There must have been pressure on them.
I realised then that, no, they hadn’t looked uncomfortable or unpolished. In fact Lacuna Coil had looked like they were enjoying every minute of showing the crowd their new creations.
Matt: I saw so much energy. I suspect, that you might have been quite nervous before you went on stage.
Criz: Yeah.We were…
I remembered what I had written in my review of the show for Emptyspiral…
Matt: And I wrote this in my review of the show which I wrote before I came here today. You went on that stage and you had presence. and you had confidence in the new music. For that I applaud you, it was fantastic. Seriously! It did not show that this was not something you had not played lots before.
Marco, still smiling, leans forward and shakes my hand.
Marco: Bella!
Criz (still in control of the interview): Are you sure? Even on the new songs?
Matt: Especially on the new songs! Because you had this energy. You were just enjoying what you were doing so much.
Andi: Yeah we were having fun. Even if we were concentrating on remembering the lyrics. Sometimes we made some mistakes on the new songs but we were having a relaxing time. We are not too nervous actually playing the songs, we were quite comfortable considering it was the first time we played the songs.
Criz: First time we played the songs, first time 1 hour and 20 minutes, first time with some new technical equipment-
Matt: It didn’t show.
And it didn’t.
Marco: First time for me without a problem with my hand or my back!
He laughs. But it’s relaxed and he’s obviously reflecting on how much he enjoyed the previous evening.
Matt: For me you had raised to another level. That is for me what it felt like, I don’t know… For me you had this renewed energy. I think that’s what you got from playing the new songs.
Criz: Question for you. Did you like the fact that we had the same backdrop and intro as the website?
By now I was resigned to the fact that this interview was no longer mine and I was in fact being interviewed by Lacuna Coil.
Matt: Yes.
Criz: Or would you prefer to have a show with a different kind of a kind of a backdrop?
Matt: No, because for me it brought the two things together. When people go to the show and listen to your music and then go to the website they may say ‘I know this music’ It connects the two things.
Criz: So you like the idea to have the same things?
Matt: Definitely!
Andi: I think also that the people were very enthusiastic, they helped us a lot. We never felt that we were playing something they don’t know or that they weren’t moving with the songs. They gave us immediately the feeling that they enjoyed the songs. It was very positive.
I remembered back to the previous night. Standing near the front of the Forum and surrounded by two thousand fellow fans watching Lacuna Coil. I remembered the enthusiasm shown by the people around me when they heard the new songs.
Matt: You know what? Between each song I could hear people saying ‘Wow’ and ‘That fucking rocked’…
It’s at this point I’m reminded that I have five minutes left in ‘my’ interview before the band have to head off for a photoshoot.
Criz: We have to finish the questions for you, because we are interviewing you now!
Everyone laughs and I join them. This interview has taken a completely different turn that what I initially expected.
There’s a moment of silence as people recover and I snatch back control while I can.
Matt: Are we going to see any different versions of ‘Karmacode’?
Andi: I don’t know when… I can tell you that we have a little movie, a ten minute movie, which is based on the touring of ‘Comalies’, so you will see a lot of friends that we met on the road, a lot of the people, the fans, the other bands. It’s very cool. I don’t know if it’s going to be in the first edition of the album or if they are going to keep it for the special box. And then there is a 5.1 audio version of the album, which is amazing…
(Note: Since conducting this interview Andrea has confirmed with me that the movie will be on the first edition release of Karmacode.)
Criz: You’ll get two CDs – one CD and one DVD…
Andi: But that is also going to be a limited edition because not everybody owns the 5.1 systems. So it’s surely not going to be in the first edition. The ten minute movie is very funny, its kinda like the studio one we did for ‘Comalies’, but its way better and its all about the touring, so you get to know much more about the private life of the band on tour.
Matt: What’s the next single out after our truth?
Andi: Some countries are going with ‘Closer’ and some with ‘Enjoy the Silence’.
Criz (laughing): And some with ‘Nothing Else Matters’!
Marco: But I don’t really like that song, so I’m not sure it’s going to work…
Thinking about Enjoy Silence, I remember the end of ‘Karmacode’ and want to know a little more about the cover.
Matt: When I listened to the album today, the last song ‘Without Fear’ felt like the perfect ending because it just fades away.
Andi: Yeah it is actually.
Matt: But then ‘Enjoy the Silence’ came on and it felt like an extra.
Marco: It is!
Criz: It’s meant to be!
Matt: It works so well. Did you feel the energy last night? When people realised what it was?
All three of them smile and nod.
Andi: Actually we meant it like that. For us the album is done with ‘Without Fear’, and that is a bonus for fans, and a good song to play live.
I thought back again to the previous night and the way that Lacuna Coil had taken the song and made it their own. It had proved very popular with the crowd, not least because it was well known, but certainly also because what the band had done with the song.
Matt: Have you had any feedback from Depeche Mode?
Andi: Yeah. Yeah, they like the song. They gave us the permission to do the video for it without paying money, which is very difficult to get. We will probably try to build a video between live and some studio shots that we’re gonna do in America. Because we’re gonna shoot the video for ‘Closer’ in Los Angeles now before the tour starts, and we may do some extra shots for the Depeche Mode video, as some territories want to use that for a single. Just two or three – Finland, France and maybe another one. For America and UK it’s going to be ‘Closer’.
All this talk about the singles on ‘Karmacode’ made me think once more about ‘Our Truth’. I knew that Lacuna Coil liked to mess about with the mixes on their music – you just have to listen to ‘Tight Rope’ or of course ‘Aeon’ but there was something about ‘Our Truth’ that I needed to know…
Matt: ‘ Our Truth’ – at the end when you have the bass and then it fades out and then back in again. What was your inspiration there?
Marco: Yeah we decided to do that after the mixing of the song during the mastering, to do something different. We have another song ‘The Game’ which finishes with, not the same cut, but the same kind of style, a different riff, but powerful. So we decided to do something different. The first idea was making something like a radio or TV noise, then we decided to do something like a fade out then fade in again. Alice in Chains, they did the same in a song.
Criz. Did you like the idea of the radio thing?
Matt: Yeah. It’s like you’re retuning it.
Criz. Yeah!
Matt: …trying to get it back in again.
Andi: Trying to find the signal…
Matt: The visual look of ‘Our Truth’, the video, did you have a concept behind that?
Andi: It was the directors, they gave us three different scripts of their opinion about the video and picked up the one we liked the most and then we tried to work it out together – changing the things we didn’t like, making it a bit more personal. Basically it was the directors’ idea because we really didn’t have any time to think about it.
Matt: Do you like it?
Andi: Yeah Yeah! I like how it came out.
Thinking how very different it was from the previous videos I wanted to know what they thought of it.
Matt: How does it compare for you personally to the video you did for ‘Swamped’ or ‘Heaven’s a Lie’?
Criz: You know what? The main difference that you can feel is it is make on real film, it’s not digital. It’s like a movie so it’s more warm, it’s more real.
By now it was clear that the band were proud of ‘Karmacode’ and having just heard it I knew why. I was however conscious of the fact that as they continued to evolve, moving away from the more gothic sounds of say ‘In A Reverie’, there would be some people that may not enjoy the newer Lacuna Coil.
Matt: What do you say to people that say they don’t like the new direction that your music has taken?
Criz(quick as a flash-). Fuck off!
Everyone laughs, myself included.
Criz: I mean. That’s Lacuna Coil. We’re not becoming pop, we not getting into gothic or some cliché, we just us. We’re us, our music is honest because we want people hear what we want to say, so if they don’t like it, buy something else.
Andi: Maybe some of the early Lacuna Coil fans will not like the new direction, but you can’t avoid it. There will always be somebody that likes the first demo better or only like the female voice or only like the male voice. You can’t really listen to what everybody has to say because then you will stop playing.
Criz: We just grow up and put our new emotion and feelings and influences in it.
Andi: If you like it we’re happy of course, but if you don’t there’s nothing we can do about it. We can’t make everybody happy.
Criz (grinning): If not, buy a kebab and listen to Hanson…
Andi: But if you are a fan I think you can recognise the direction of the band. I think you will find every element you will like from the band, there are the slow songs, there are the powerful songs, there are the two voices. There is everything that’s made Lacuna Coil so far, I don’t think you can not like it if you’re a fan.
Time was almost up and I still had loads of questions. I guess it was time to come to a conclusion.
Matt: Is there anything else you want to tell us about ‘Karmacode’?
Marco(laughing): Buy it!
Criz: Buy it, because it’s a very good album! I mean…I listen to it. I never did with ‘Comalies’. But this… I really like it! It really helps me no matter what mood I am in. It’s great.
Andi: We’ve been listening to the songs for maybe a year. Between the demo we did, and the first recording session… but we still like them. That’s something that never happened before. With ‘Comalies’, or ‘In A Reverie’ or ‘Unleashed Memories’, we listened to them for three months then we were tired already.
Last question. The interview had been fun and I still had about ten I really wanted to ask. But they would have to wait.
No. Now it was my turn to get my own back.
Matt (grinning evilly): Once last question…What DOES ‘Lacuna Coil’ mean?
Ha! It worked! There was rolling of the eyes followed by laughter all around. I just sat and grinned at Andi, Criz, and Marco.
Criz: Empty Spiral!!
I waited for the laughter to subside. The smiles however, remained.
Matt. Thanks a lot guys!
Criz: Thanks a lot man.
Marco: Bella Matt!
Andi: Bella!
Criz: Bella!
FIN
Thanks to Lacuna Coil, Sarah from Century Media, and the staff of the Devonshire Arms in Camden.
[hozbreaktop]
No Comments