### Lacuna Coil: Karmacode

#### 07/04/06 || Statik Majik

I’m a sucker for metal/rock bands with female vocals. And no, magical elf-pop also known as Nightwish does not count. I used to get decent kicks out of The Gathering, Within Temptation, Lullacry and Lacuna Coil. But what happened? The Gathering are probably on acid these days, because they haven’t released anything even remotely metal for years. And Within Temptation decided that sounding like a lame copy of Evanescence would be a cool thing to do. Well, it’s not. Not even close.

Fortunate for me, the remaining two refused to become Teh Suck. Finnish Lullacry still rocks and Lacuna Coil have stayed loyal to their musical direction as well. And the vocalists of both bands are still hot. Especially Cristina Scabbia.

Ok, the music then. I have to admit that I’ve only heard one album from Lacuna Coil, and it’s “Comalies”. I suppose I should check out their earlier stuff too, but quite frankly I’m just too lazy to do so. So sue me. Anyway, I had one problem with that disc: after the three or four first songs it got a bit boring and the only reason why I still have the energy to listen to it every once in a while is because of Cristina’s voice. It’s just fucken beautiful. Simple as that. Beautiful.

So is “Karmacode” any better then? Definitely. Now that I’ve listened to it a few times, I’d say that it’s actually a major fucken improvement compared to “Comalies”. It’s catchy as fuck to say the least. There’s a small scent of heaviness in there, but that’s it. You see, Lacuna Coil is not about being heavy.

They managed to get a pretty decent sound for this album. I especially love how the bass sounds. It’s not as incredible as on the earlier Korn-albums, but I can’t say that it would pale too much in comparison (and that’s not the only Korn resemblance found on this album, I have to add). You can fucken hear the bass, which is a thing people should pay more attention to when recording albums.

Cristina does a near-to-perfect job. It feels like she’s got more variety in her vocals this time, which is a change I’m more than happy to welcome. She uses more of the lower scale of her vocals than on the previous release which makes her voice even more tempting than it already is. How did Lord K describe these italians...? I think he used term “fuck-metal”, and again I have to agree with him.

Lacuna Coil’s music would be even better if they’d give a nice warm cup of “shut-the-fuck-up” to Andrea Ferro. Cristina’s voice is absolutely everything that Lacuna Coil needs. Honestly, the songs do not need male vocals. Let’s take the opener, “Fragile” for example. Andrea’s singing spoils half of that song. Same goes for “Closer”. On the other songs his voice fortunately doesn’t irritate me that much. So half a point gets taken away because of the totally useless male vocals.

7,5 /10.

( Note by The Lord: I was actually thinking about reviewing this album but sister Statik beat me to it, the fucken bastard. I just have to say something about it though. When you think about Lacuna Coil, do you think of Andrea Ferro? No you don’t. It’s all the Scab-whore everyone thinks of. Get rid of the useless guy, for fuck’s sake, he adds nothing but irritation to Lacuna Coil. Also lemme add that Lacuna Coil found Fieldy of Korn’s lost bass-sound on this album. As well as every fucken scrapped Korn-riff around. It’s nice to see that Statik actually noticed this too since he’s basically clueless. Lacuna Coil are a Korn-clone when it comes to riffing, only difference is they have a chick and a fag doing vocals instead of just a fag. Listen to this album and you’ll see what I mean. By the way, I have “Our truth” currently set as the ringsignal on my cellphone. The best tune on the album as well as the best song these Italian bitches ever wrote. I disagree with Statik’s score. I give it a 5. There, that was all. )

- Information
- Released: 2006
- Label: Century Media
- Website: www.lacunacoil.it
- Band
- Cristina Scabbia: female vocals (give me a break, of course they’re female vocals, it’s a fucken woman singing)
- Andrea Ferro: male vocals (oh, really?)
- Cristiano Migliore: guitars
- Marco Biazzi: guitars
- Marco Coti Zelati: bass
- Cristiano Mozzati: drums

- Tracklist
- 01. Fragile
- 02. To the edge
- 03. Our truth
- 04. Within me
- 05. Devoted
- 06. You create
- 07. What I see
- 08. Fragments of faith
- 09. Closer
- 10. In visible light
- 11. The game
- 12. Without fear
- 13. Enjoy the silence