New LACUNA COIL Lineup Is 'Magical,' Says CRISTINA SCABBIA

Metal Express Radio conducted an interview with vocalist Cristina Scabbia of Italian heavy rockers LACUNA COIL on November 14 in Newcastle, England. You can now listen to the chat in the YouTube clip below.

Speaking about LACUNA COIL's recent lineup changes, Cristina said: "Well, it seems really drastic, because, from the previous record, three members are not in the band anymore. But the truth is that when we released [2014's] 'Broken Crown Halo', Cristiano ['CriZ' Mozzati], the drummer, and Cristiano ['Pizza' Migliore], the guitar player, already resigned before they recorded the album, but they decided to be on the record anyway, because they said, 'Okay, let's do this last celebration all together and play.' They actually recorded the record; it's not that they resigned during the recording. They decided before. We said, 'Okay. It makes total sense.' After years, priorities change. The drummer got a baby girl, so he wanted to take care of her. And they were probably not that much anymore into the music life, the tour life. So they resigned more than two years ago… a lot more than two years ago. Before 'Broken Crown Halo'… Now I don't even remember what year it came out. But, of course, the perception of people is just, like, 'Oh my God! They left all together.' And it's not like that. So the recent departure was only Maus [Marco Biazzi], the guitar player, who decided to resign as well."

She continued: "We have been having Ryan [Blake Folden], our drummer, for a lot of years now, because he was already teching for CriZ, and he was the natural choice, because, I mean, he's a fantastic drummer, he's a monster on stage. He knew the songs, we knew how it would have been to live with him on a tour bus, which is really important, 'cause we want to have a circle of friends, which is almost like a family. We don't care about getting someone from outside that we don't really know about. 'Oh, he's a great drummer.' We don't care about that. We really want to feel like a family whenever we move, 'cause it's really important. You travel all the time, you're close in a tour bus, you're together pretty much 24 hours [a day], and so for us, it's really important. And once we started to perform live [in support of this year's 'Delirium' album], Diego [Cavallotti], our new guitar player, came in and started to play the shows with us. And we didn't officialize it purely because we didn't want to confuse people, because we didn't really know how it was working. He might have been the wrong choice in a way, because we wanted to test him, of course. He was the new guy. [And] I think he passed the test. He's fantastic. I think the new lineup is magical. A lot of people are complimenting [us] about it. Nobody said, 'Oh, I prefer the old school.' Everybody's mesmerized and said that we've been playing the best shows ever."

Asked if LACUNA COIL deliberately made "Delirium" a heavier effort than some of the other recent albums, Cristina said: "No, it was not deliberate. Actually, it was very natural. We started writing new songs, and once you start writing, you understand what type of direction you're gonna follow. The only deliberate thing was that we wanted to write songs that we would really, really enjoy to play live. Because we love our more slow songs that we wrote, but we figured out that on stage we like to perform the more aggressive… songs where we can move and kind of take it all out."

Scabbia also talked about the increased use of death metal-style growling in LACUNA COIL's new material. She explained: "I've been saying for ages that [male vocalist Andrea Ferro] has a great growling voice, but, you know, sometimes we were, like, 'Oh, maybe people will be weirded out by that.' And I'm happy that we use it even more."

LACUNA COIL earlier in the month released a new song called "Naughty Christmas".

You can buy and/or stream "Naughty Christmas" on all digital platforms. The front cover and font were all created by bassist Marco "Maki" Coti-Zelati.

LACUNA COIL just wrapped up a successful European tour, which was sold out in various cities, including London, Birmingham, Bristol, Southampton and Tilburg. The band is set to do another run of dates in 2017.

"Delirium" entered The Billboard 200 chart at position No. 33 with first-week sales of just over 13,000 units — nearly all from pure album sales. The set follows the No. 27-peaking "Broken Crown Halo", which also opened with around 13,000 copies back in 2014.