Now on its fifth studio album with “Shallow Life,” Italian import Lacuna Coil has landed on a neat little formula: Layer some dense, gothic metal guitar, throw in a propulsive beat and turn up the bass, then unleash the stunning voice of Cristina Scabbia, one hell of a secret weapon. Forget what you thought about metal being a man’s world. You don’t need testosterone when you can sing like this.
By way of comparison, check out Andrea Ferro, the band’s male vocalist. You can tell he’s trying, maybe even a little too hard, but his throaty bark is too limited in range to be anything more than a caricature. His unintentional role, then, is to provide a standard that Scabbia can put to shame. Here’s what generic metal singing sounds like, now here’s what it sounds like when you really mean it.
As for the other members of Lacuna Coil, well, they’re not quite as memorable. In a general sense, the instrumentation of any one song on “Shallow Life” could be interchanged with that of most any other, and it wouldn’t much matter. There are two exceptions: On “Wide Awake” and the album-ending title track, the boys lay off the power chords and let Scabbia have a go at a couple of ballads.
She doesn’t disappoint. “Wide Awake” especially emphasizes the mystical quality of Scabbia’s voice, seeming at times to float ethereally above the music. It’s epic and theatrical, impressive and intriguing, affecting and emotional, all at once.
Fans will mainly be interested in the heavy stuff, though, and they shouldn’t find much to complain about there either. Taken as a whole, “Shallow Life” sounds like a mature and purposeful album, but it also sounds like Lacuna Coil’s best collection of songs yet. It isn’t doing anything groundbreaking, but the melodies are tightly crafted, and the musicianship is of a caliber high enough to keep things interesting even when Scabbia isn’t singing.
As evident on tracks such as “I Won’t Tell You” and “I’m Not Afraid,” “Shallow Life” has more energy and more heft than “Karmacode,” the band’s breakthrough 2006 album, or anything that came before it.
Part of the credit has to go to producer Don Gilmore for adding extra doses of crunch and polish, and much of the rest of it to the rhythm section of bassist Marco Zelati and drummer Cristiano Mozzati.
Of course, the main reason “Shallow Life” stands out from the rest of Lacuna Coil’s work is the level of trust the band members placed in Scabbia to lead the troops into battle. Lead single “Spellbound” is one of the few songs that gives Ferro more air time, but they smartly let her take the chorus. You won’t remember Ferro’s verses, you probably won’t remember the riffs, but trust me, you’ll remember that chorus.
It’s easy to draw connections to Evanescence, a band with similarly gothic inclinations and a lot of weight resting on the shoulders of its female vocalist. Don’t be fooled by Evanescence’s upper hand in the sales column, though. Lacuna Coil is more committed to the Eastern-tinged atmospherics, its riffs are meatier, and when it comes down to it, Amy Lee has nothing on Cristina Scabbia.
Maybe Lacuna Coil would be a wholly unremarkable band if it didn’t have Scabbia. There’s no point in speculating, though; they do have her, and on “Shallow Life” they realized just how special that is.
<em>”“ Alex Goodman</em>
E-mail Goodman at agoodman@media.ucla.edu.