Italy's Lacuna Coil made their first ever trek to Australia this month, ending more than 18 months on the road supporting their latest album 'Karmacode'. Touring as part of Dave Mustaine's Gigantour juggernaut, the band played to thousands of fans every night, continuing their ascent from a cult Gothic Metal act to one of Heavy Metal's brightest stars. I caught up with vocalists Cristina Scabbia and Andrea Ferro after their first Sydney performance to talk about the tour, performing with Dave Mustaine and the next Lacuna Coil album.
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Spiritech: This is your first Australian tour. How are things going?
Lacuna Coil: Cristina: Awesome. This is our fourth show, our first time in Australia, and the reactions are great. We've been waiting for so long; for other reasons we couldn't come here before, but especially now as we've seen the reaction we definitely like Australia.
Spiritech: How are the Aussie fans treating you?Lacuna Coil: Cristina: Awesomely. We've been getting a lot of mails asking us to come to play, and we can totally see that there's a strong basis of fans here, which is pretty unusual 'cause we never played here.
They've been so loyal, due to the fact that we've been around for ten years and we never played here, it's amazing to see that they were following us, ordering CDs from abroad. It's fantastic to see such a loyal fan base.
Spiritech: Even with the amount of touring you've done recently, did you ever dream of getting here?
Lacuna Coil: Cristina: Well of course, 'cause we've been touring everywhere, so we were basically missing Japan and Australia. We played in Japan two or three weeks ago, and then we came to Australia.
Spiritech: What kept you from touring here for so long; was it a money thing, or was it just too far to travel?
Lacuna Coil: Cristina: Hmmm, no I guess we've just been too busy doing something else.
Andrea: We've been playing a lot in the States and Europe, so it was really impossible to go anywhere else.
Spiritech: Have you had much chance to look around Sydney?
Lacuna Coil: Cristina: No, not yet because yesterday we had like a band meeting and we went out for dinner and we spent the night out, so we didn't really see much. The weather's been awesome though, and tomorrow we're going to go sightseeing.
Spiritech: What's the overall touring experience been like in Australia compared to elsewhere?
Lacuna Coil: Andrea: Usually, most of our tours are with a tour bus not with a plane; only here because of the distances we have to fly to every show. This is the first time we do something like that, usually we only go with a tour bus and then travel around, so there is even more time to kill.
Cristina: We travel almost every day, especially when we tour in America, you can travel for like 17 or 18 hours. Although there is a driver, so in the meantime we're sleeping. So in a way it's more relaxing because you have like a moving house and you don't have to wake up to go catch a flight (laughs). You can sleep in the meantime, so it's not that hard once you get used to it.
Spiritech: Cristina, you're performing 'A Tout Le Monde' live with Megadeth every night of this tour. How has that experience been?
Lacuna Coil: Cristina: It's amazing of course. I'm singing a song with a historical band you know, and they're great people; this is amazing because you can mix up everything: great musicians, great people and it's a good song.
Spiritech: When you recorded the song, did you ever see yourself performing it live anywhere, let alone in Australia?
Lacuna Coil: Cristina: I didn't really think about Australia when I recorded it. But I was sure that somewhere we would probably have the chance to sing it together, 'cause it happens quite a lot that you meet other bands during festivals or they are just passing by your town when you're home, so I was expecting somewhere, sometime to do that.
Spiritech: But not in Australia!Lacuna Coil: Cristina: I wasn't expecting Australia, no! (laughs)
Spiritech: Pretty much at the bottom of the list?
Lacuna Coil: Cristina: Yeah, just like wow! (laughs)
Spiritech: You guys stand out a lot from the other bands on this tour. Do you find the fans react differently to Lacuna Coil than they do bands like DevilDriver or Static-X?
Lacuna Coil: Cristina: It's amazing to see that most of the time they like every band on the Gigantour, and this is great. It shows there are no more barriers, there's not any more fans that are, "I like this and that and that's it" because the other stuff is not cool, which is something I hate, because I think you should be open and like every kind of music.
But it happens very, very often that fans with a DevilDriver T-shirt or a Megadeth T-shirt are coming to us, or people in Lacuna Coil T-shirts are getting their skin signed by DevilDriver and getting it tattooed and I think it's awesome. It shows that it's a big family.
Spiritech: Indeed. Moving on, what's the reaction to 'Karmacode' been like?
Lacuna Coil: Cristina: It's doing good.
Spiritech: In what ways do you think it's an improvement on past releases?
Lacuna Coil: Andrea: I think because after 'Comalies' we've been touring so much in the States and Europe and everywhere, so we felt the live energy was missing a bit on the CD, so we wanted to have something groovier and heavier, especially to play live after the release. It's something we searched for on 'Karmacode', that power.
Cristina: It's definitely the best CD that we've done. And that's why you release records, because you're trying to improve yourself, and I think we definitely did it. It's obvious to say that we're more mature, but we definitely had an evolution; a good one! (laughs)
Spiritech: So where do you go from here: is it more touring? Because obviously that's an important way for band such as yourselves to maintain your fan base.
Lacuna Coil: Cristina: Well, touring is important to promote yourself and keep yourself in shape with your vocals and your instruments, but at the same time now we feel we have to stop for a while to write some more music, some new music. 'Cause after a while, you can't help it, you love your songs, but you getting tired of playing the same songs over and over... I'm just hungry for something new.
Spiritech: Will we see a headlining tour from Lacuna Coil for the next album?
Lacuna Coil: Andrea: Yeah, definitely. The next album is the next step.
Cristina: Yeah, I mean it makes sense to come back and do something then.
Andrea: Now we have to go back, write the album, and then we can tour again! (both laugh) We don't want to wait too much because between 'Comalies' and 'Karmacode' it was almost four years because of all the touring and then the writing process.
Spiritech: We waited for a while.Lacuna Coil: Cristina: (laughs) Yeah.
Andrea: We don't want that to happen again, and this time around we started touring straight from day one of the release. We've been touring with Rob Zombie, we did Ozzfest, we did huge festivals and headlining tours in Europe, we co-headlined with In Flames in the States, we did Mexico and then finished with the Jagermeister tour with Stone Sour and Shadows Fall.
Cristina: Then the headlining tour: we toured forever! (laughs).
Spiritech: Wow. With the next album, do you have any idea when that will be written and recorded?
Lacuna Coil: Andrea: Writing, yes. The writing has to start straight after this tour, although there may be a little break in between.
Cristina: No, it's too early to start talking about recording really. We definitely have some material though.
Spiritech: So no idea what the next album will sound like then?
Lacuna Coil: Cristina: Hmmm, no! (laughs) It's gonna be a blood Thrash album with Rap, Dance, Techno and Funk influences. And Reggae! (laughs) No, all we know is it's going to rock, that's for sure.
Spiritech: A few years ago you guys were doing the acoustic set followed by the electric set afterwards. Is that something you're going to do again in the near future?
Lacuna Coil: Cristina: Who knows? It was something special so we want to keep it this way because it makes no sense to do it all the time, or people are going to say, "Yeah okay, that's boring". It's cool if it stays something intimate and special. But who knows, maybe yes, 'cause we like it.
Spiritech: Maybe you could even bring it here. I really like the acoustic version of 'Heaven's A Lie'.
Lacuna Coil: Cristina: Thank you! Next time maybe.
Spiritech: Here's hoping. Now, the band's popularity has gone through the roof in the last few years. What would you attribute that to; just good old fashioned hard work?
Lacuna Coil: Cristina: Working, definitely. I think it's a combination of different things; working hard, and as I said before, trying to be open to other influences and not staying closed in a cliché. I don't know. A lot of things.
Spiritech: The increased popularity of female-fronted bands like Nightwish, Evanescence and Leaves Eyes has probably helped as well.
Lacuna Coil: Cristina: That's true, but if you think about it, first of all we have two singers and this is something they don't have, so we can definitely do...
Andrea: Well not Nightwish, they do now.
Cristina: They do now (laughs), but they didn't have, and we're not playing the Beauty and the Beast. No offence to anyone at all, but sometimes he sings in a more melodic way or I can be more aggressive, so it's a completely different thing. I mean, there's a lot of bands with a male singer but no one's comparing those bands! (laughs)
Andrea: I think it's through that it's become popular... if you have a girl in the band, but not always the bands are really good I think.
Spiritech: Is this the last tour for 'Karmacode'?
Lacuna Coil: Andrea: Yeah. We have a few shows in Italy, but that's more an intimate thing, like we have a birthday party for an Italian TV channel called Rock TV, which only plays Rock music all day. And then another event connected to 'Guitar Hero III', since we have a song that's one of the bonus tracks on the game, so we're playing at the release party. So we can drink and have fun.
Spiritech: Any last words for pyromusic.net readers?
Lacuna Coil: Andrea: To the Australians fans in particular we have to say thanks for the patience, because they've been waiting like ten years to see us or five years for the newer fans, so we promise we're going to try with the next album to come and include Australia in the normal touring schedule.
Cristina: I love you all! (laughs) Rock 'n' Roll! No, thank you! The last words are thank you.
- Spiritech
