by Tom Lounges

LACUNA COIL... are becoming the rock ‘n’ roll success story of the year! The music from their nearly two-year-old album -- Comalies –-continues to climb sales charts and is steadily getting added at more radio stations daily.

The international Reuters News Agency recently declared the Italian sextet as being “on the verge of a major breakthrough!”

In short, Lacuna Coil are experiencing the heavy metal version of the now famous Hootie & The Blowfish story, where a talented band [well...maybe not quite the case with Hootie] releases an album that nearly goes unnoticed on these shores. Then suddenly it catches fire, putting the group on the map, and prompting the media to declare them –– “an overnight sensation.”

In truth, there is nothing “overnight” about Lacuna Coil. This dedicated group has been plugging away and making great music together since 1996. They have been a successful band in much of Europe almost since day one.

Comalies is their third career album, but it is their first ever to chart in America and make playlists at major market commercial radio stations on these shores. Prior to this disc, the group dished out two powerful releases -- Halflife and Unleashed Memories -- which quickly started a buzz about them among “underground metal” fans.

To the delight of Lacuna Coil’s record label, Century Media, Comalies is the company’s first album to ever crack the Billboard 200. It pushed its way up to the #194 chart position the week of July 28, just as this issue of Midwest BEAT was going to press.

With an average of 5,800 copies of Comalies now walking out of retail stores each week, the album mostly likely will have climbed to a new chart plateau by the time these words are read.

Century-Media feels the recent surge in sales is at least partially due to the band having a high profile, as Second Stage artist on this year’s OzzFest.

According to the label, of all the Second Stage acts, Lacuna Coil are only being outsold at retail by Slipknot and Atreyu, both working brand new albums less than two months old.

Singer Cristina Scabbia said that regardless of why, she is just thrilled that America is finally responding to Lacuna Coil’s music.

Equally as happy about finally conquering the U.S., are her L.C. bandmates -- drummer Cristiano Mozzati, co-lead singer Andreo Ferro, bassist Marco Coti Zelati, and guitarists Cristiano Migliore and Marco Biazzi.

“Our lives are not changed or turned upside down by the sudden success we have started having [here],” said the very upbeat Scabbia, whose voice has just enough of an Italian accent to make her sound like a rock ‘n’ roll Sophia Loren. “Yes, our success is new here, but we have been successful in Europe for a long time.”

Sandwiched alongside groups like Lamb Of God, Slayer, Black Label Society, God Forbid, Superjoint Ritual and assorted other death, doom and hardcore metal, there are some who might argue that Lacuna Coil may seem a tad bit light to be playing on the bill of this year’s OzzFest.

Their unique sound is fairly equal parts ethereal, gothic and progressive, all sewed together with a hard edge and heavy rhythms.

“The [OzzFest] audiences are amazing. We’ve been accepted well. We are getting very good reactions from the audiences,” she said. “Being on the Second Stage, we only get about 20 minutes to perform each day, so we keep things as intense as we can up there. We give 100% up there and make the most of our time in front of each audience. Each performance puts us in front of people who have never seen or heard Lacuna Coil, so we want to be the best we can be and leave them with a good impression. If they listen and pay attention, people can tell the potential of a band in just 20 minutes, if they make every second count.”

For their OzzFest set, the band is sticking strictly to material from Comalies, because that is the album de jour and those are the songs fans are likely to know by them. “We are doing four songs from the record,” she said. “We do ‘Swamped,’ our new single. We are also do ‘Daylight Dancer’, ‘Tightrope’ and ‘Heaven’s A Lie’ (the band’s first U.S. single to click).

While the main stage artists’ performance slots remain the same throughout the whole tour, most Second Stage bands rotate slots daily.

“A couple of bands like Lamb Of God and Hatebreed and Slipknot, all have a secure spot every day. But Lacuna Coil and the others are rotating,” she said. “We may be performing at 2 in the afternoon one day and then maybe 9:30 in the morning another day. The good thing about playing at different times, is that you get a chance to go and see all the bands perform.”

Scabbia is still uncertain if a third single will be released to radio from Comalies, but it would not surprise her. “They might do a third one, but I think that will depend on how the OzzFest goes,” she said. “Things are going very well right now, so... maybe.”

So how hard is it for the stunning, raven-haired Italian beauty to co-exist with the macho male types who populate the 2004 incarnation of Ozzy’s annual traveling rock circus.

Scabbia accesses that she is generally treated “like one of the guys” by the members of the various bands.

“They are all very respectful to me of course, but other than that, they treat me like one of the guys. We all hang around together. This is really not such a new experience for me. Lacuna Coil tour a lot, so I am used to being on the road for long periods of time with the five guys in my band. There’s just a lot more guys this time,” she laughed.

“It is just like being on a camping trip with a lot of friends. After a few days on the road, you really get to know everybody pretty quickly,” she said. “You only play a very short time, so you find you have a lot of time on your hands. You walk around, hang out, eat, and watch the other bands perform. It’s a wonderful experience to be a part of all this.”

Once OzzFest wraps up in September, Scabbia hopes to return home to Italy and take a few weeks off.

“Not for too long though,” she quickly adds. “We really want to start on our new album,” she said. “We want to record it before the end of this year.”

While they already have many songs written for that next studio adventure, no Lacuna Coil songs are ever actually “finished” until the moment they are laid down in a studio.

“We are never completely happy with any song, because we are always thinking of ways to modify them. Until we actually record a song, we probably change it a thousand times,” she laughed. “We like to change the structures. They are more works in progress, until we finally go into the studio with them.”

Comalies came out in 2002 and was recorded quickly. “We tend to work pretty fast,” she explained. “We never have a lot of time in the studio because this band is always out on the road. We wrote the songs for Comalies just a couple of months before we recorded them.”

The writing process within Lacuna Coil is a democratic one, according to the singer, who generally writes all the lyrics. “I look at voices as being just another instrument, so we hand pick words to fit the music,” she said.

Having two distinct lead singers allows the band a lot of freedom in the writing and execution of their songs. If there are aggressive parts, then Andrea does those, because I can not really growl,” she said. “If there is a part that needs something more mellow and more subdued, then that is something for my voice.”

As for their progression Lacuna Coil’s sound, having logged two more years together since their last studio output, Scabbia is straight up on what she said fans can expect from the band’s fourth release.

“For sure we will be staying rock/metal, because we like the combination of the aggressive parts with the melody. I personally think that a song is not a song unless it has a melody in it, so we balance our songs’ between aggressive parts and mellow parts,” she said.

“This next album will certainly show an evolution, but it will not be too different from Comalies, because it would make no sense to stray too much from the Lacuna Coil style that the people who follow the band right now know,” she concluded. “We don’t want to change the style of the music. If a band changes their style, they may as well change their name too.”

Lacuna Coil is name that should not be changed, because it is one catching fire from coast to coast at this time. They are a “coil” wound tight and about to “spring” to North American fame in a very big way!

See LACUNA COIL live

when OZZFEST hits the TWEETER CENTER at Tinley Park, Illinois on SATURDAY, AUGUST 21

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