LACUNA COIL Working On 'Darker And Heavier' New Album

U.K.'s Kerrang! magazine recently conducted an interview with vocalist Cristina Scabbia of the Italian rock/metal band LACUNA COIL about the progress of the songwriting sessions for the group's follow-up to 2009's "Shallow Life", tentatively due in the summer via Century Media Records. A few excerpts from the chat follow below.

Kerrang!: Have you got a lot of ideas for the record?

Cristina: Yeah, we definitely have a lot. We learned so much from making "Shallow Life" and working with a different producer [Don Gilmore; LINKIN PARK, BULLET FOR MY VALENTINE] gave us a great starting point for this record. We want to bring everything we have to the table and just explore that. We're more inspired by the dark side of life than anything else right now, and I'm pretty sure the new album will be darker and heavier because of that.

Kerrang!: Has this darker inspiration come from recent life experience?

Cristina: No, not really. I've honestly always been attracted by weird, dark, horror things; it's something I cannot really explain. Some people think these things are scary, and then there are people like me who enjoy them just because there's a sort of beauty in darkness. I think it's part of us, we always love that stuff. But it's not necessarily inspired by bad things happening around us. You can stop and think about darker stuff even if you're not living with it."

Kerrang!: How is the new material sounding?

Cristina: It's still a rock sound. I like the direction we took on "Shallow Life" and this is going to be in that vein. I still love metal to death, but at this point I like rock more. I like being able to bring different things that are not necessarily from metal to the album because I like the contamination between sounds. I like that music is always evolving and that you can be free to take sounds and mix them together.

Kerrang!: Any other surprises in store?

Cristina: At this stage I actually don't know. We don't plan that, because in some ways I like to stay with that classic sound and in some other ways I like to do something completely different and surprise people. I've learned over the years that you cannot make everyone happy. If you stay classic, there will be some who say you're not innovative, and if you're innovative, people will complain that you sold out or you went off the rails. I can honestly say I don't care anymore. We want to be free to do whatever we want. We love rock and roll and we love metal, but we don't want to put any limitations on what we might make.

Kerrang!: With so many albums under your belt, do you ever worry about repeating yourselves?

Cristina: I don't put too much time into thinking anything like that; even if I repeat myself or the band repeats itself, we don't care, because it's still us. I think that we've found our own style, so we're free to do the same thing over and over if we want, but I don't think that will happen. But we can also change completely if we want; we don't feel stress, we don't feel pressure, we just don't care. We just want to go with the flow and play together. In the end, we'll put out whatever we like.

Kerrang!: Who is going to be producing the record?

Cristina: We want to wait a little bit more and see what form the album takes as it comes together, then we'll choose a producer according to that. I'd love to work with Don again, he's a fantastic producer and a great person, but I'd also like to work with somebody else, because you can learn a lot every time you work with someone new. We'll let the music dictate that, but we're excited for whatever direction it takes us.

You can read the full article in issue No. 1344 of Kerrang! magazine, available now.