INTERVIEW: ANDREA FERRO, LACUNA COIL – September 2016

INTERVIEW: ANDREA FERRO, LACUNA COIL – September 2016
By Shane Pinnegar

Gothic metal doesn’t get any more epic than Lacuna Coil, and the Italian five-piece bring their 8th studio album Delirium to Australia in October. SHANE PINNEGAR spoke to co-lead singer Andrea Ferro to find out why they took seven years between visits.

Lacuna Coil: Australian Tour Dates

Wednesday, October 12: Amplifier Bar, Perth
Thursday, October 13: Max Watt’s, Melbourne
Friday, October 14: The Metro Theatre, Sydney
Saturday, October 15: Max Watt’s, Brisbane

Speaking from his home in Milan, Ferro says the band are warming up for their first Australian headlining shows with a run of gigs through Europe.

“Yeah, finally we’re coming for a headline tour. It’s the first time we’re coming to headline, so we’re very excited to see the people that we haven’t seen in many years, and new people that just find out about us with the last record, so it’s going to be fun. We’re bringing a lot of traditional Lacuna Coil songs as well as some of the new songs, so it’s going to be a great party.”

With four shows in four nights around the country, the party is mostly going to be on stage.

“Sometimes we do have some days where we can visit [the sights],” explains Ferro. “This time around before we come to Australia we will be in Japan for Loud Park Festival, and I think we’re going to have a couple of days in Tokyo so we can have a chance to do sightseeing a little bit.

“Then we want to come to Australia a day earlier so we can adjust to the jet lag situation and maybe see [things]. Then we are going to stay for one extra day in the end of the tour. We try as much as possible, but it’s not every easy. Once, I remember we’d been in Chile in South America for eighteen hours in total including the show! Sometimes it’s really impossible [to do anything touristy].”

Is there anything special you would be hoping to do in Australia if you did get a little bit of time off?

“Yeah, we’ve been there a couple of times, and the last time we got to see a little bit of Sydney, a little bit of Melbourne, and we went to the koala sanctuary, to the zoo,” says Ferro. “We’ve seen at little bit, but obviously it’s such a big land that it would take more time than what we have. At least we have the chance to go out with the people, experience a bit of the vibe and the culture, but I don’t expect to be able to see a lot of great things because obviously we don’t have enough time. Hopefully it will just be enough to get into the vibe, and just get to talk with some people. That would be really something.”

With Delirium out for a couple of months now, Ferro says the response to the album has been positive.

“So far it’s been pretty good – we got a lot of really great reviews, probably some of the best reviews we ever had in our career, and then also the chart results are pretty positive, and a lot of people is writing us. Either people that just find out about us, but also people that was following us up until the Karmacode era [2006], and then they kind of lost track.

“Now they’re back and they say they do really dig this album. They really have felt that there is something, some sort of continuation of the vibe of those albums, so we got to meet again a lot of people that hasn’t been with us in a while.”

Delirium is a particularly heavy and very intense record. Ferro explains that it was an emotional task to write and create the album.

“Yeah, I think we were in a kind of a different mind frame, in a different mood when we were writing the album,” he says thoughtfully, “and what we have done differently has been just following the music without trying to bring it back to our own cliché. We tried just to… if something heavy was coming we were pushing the heaviness towards the drums, or the vocals, doing some more screaming things, or some more growls, and just don’t care too much to make it what people expect from Lacuna Coil.

“We would like to surprise with this record, to have people wondering if it was really us, if it was something different. There is a new vibe – there is a new line-up for this record, and there’s definitely a lot of personal life from the last couple of years. I think unconsciously we really have just followed the music without thinking about it, without trying to have a single, or trying to have something that compromised the song, making it mellower just because people is expecting that from Lacuna Coil.”

Ferro says that the new songs are sounding great live so far, and they’re looking forward to playing more of Delirium in Australia.

“So far we only played three songs that are the first three that we released, and they’re doing really well. We are melding them to the set list, and they work pretty well. Actually, some people is complaining because we haven’t played more than three so far, but we want to really keep the rest of the songs for the fall when we’re going to come to Japan and Australia and start a proper album tour [for Delirium].

“So far it’s been more of a presentation,” he continues, “playing shows to introduce the new record, or summer shows, festivals. Now we are introducing the songs, and in October, November we start playing the full tour for Delirium, so there will be more and more of the new songs for sure.”

Guitarists Marco ‘Maus’ Biazzi and Cristiano Migliore shared six-string duties for the band for over fourteen years until Migliore departed in early 2014, followed by Biazzi at the end of 2015. Ferro explains that the interim period where Biazzi was the solitary guitarist, and moving forward with new member Diego Cavalotti made them make new arrangements of their older songs, but the sound of the band remains faithful.

“Well, we have some arrangements that works for the new line-up with just one guitar. We cut some parts that in our opinion were a bit too long, or too repetitive to keep them fresh, but in general people really want to hear the song the way they know it.

“Obviously, the sounds are all more matching the ones of the new songs, but in general we perform the songs more or less the same way they’re on the CD because people want those songs the way they know them. Maybe one day when we will have way too many songs we will have to do some kind of a medley or something like that, but so far we like better to play the songs as people want them to sound.”

Commenting on Maus’s departure, Ferro says that although it was an amicable split, it was sad to see him go.

“Yeah, obviously every change after so much time is always a bit destabilising, it’s always difficult when you have such a big change in the line-up of the band because you’ve been together for many years, and it could [also] be destabilising on a personal level. Musically it didn’t change much because Marco [Coti Zelati] – the bass player – he’s the main songwriter, and me and Christina [Scabbia – co-lead singer], we’re always responsible for the vocal lines and the lyrics, so on that side it didn’t really change much, but obviously something… it’s different.

“A different person playing guitar, a different personality when you’re on tour…” continues Ferro, “… it is different, but we’re really determined to keep pushing the project, and if you look back, me, Marco & Christina, we are the ones that started everything in ’96, so we’re the only, basically, survivors, let’s say – musical survivors since the very beginning of the band.

“We want to keep pushing our idea of sound. Obviously there has been some time to adapt. It’s been also weird to record the album just the three of us and Ryan [Folden – drummer since 2012], so it was the first time we were so few people in the studio. It’s different. It’s sort of a new chapter for us – almost a new book we’re writing with this new line-up, but definitely we want to keep bringing the sound and the ideas that has always been behind our group.”

I ask Ferro to elaborate on the recording process. As the first time in fifteen or sixteen years that Lacuna Coil have recorded without Maus or Migliore, without being able to turn to them and rely on knowing what they’re going to do. Did it make the process harder, more daunting?

“Also you have to consider that this is the first record that we have self-produced!” Ferro reminds us. “Marco, our bass player, has been producing the record as well together with an engineer. There’s been a lot of pressure in matching all the deadlines, and he’s been really good in separating the role of musician, band member, friend, with the role of producer and outside person, which has to have a fresh ear to the songs, which has to erase parts that he wrote, or change parts that he wrote.

“He’s been really good in adapting to the role, even if it’s been obviously quite stressful for him, because there’s not many people to rely [upon]. There’s no outside experienced people to ask for advice. It’s been very strong work, and I think it was the best way to do this album the way we wanted it to be.”

Ferro’s answer leads nicely into my next question: having worked with Marco for twenty-two years and Christina for twenty, is it difficult to work alongside each other, tour that closely together, and still remain a friendship?

“No, I have to say it’s pretty easy, to be honest,” he declares. “Maybe because we always have the same kind of determination towards the band, and the working, I think, is very similar. We never really struggle. Actually, I always have a great time songwriting, or brainstorming, finding all the ideas [with them].

“I think maybe the relationship has been going for so long that now we know each other so well in the negative and in the positive, that we always have the right attitude to work with each other, to tolerate, and to be understanding, and to appreciate the other people. I think we’re in such a united point of view towards our music that it’s really not a problem at all even if we know each other for many, many years.”

Lacuna Coil famously pioneered the Gothic metal sound. Ferro says their initial influences were pretty diverse.

“When we started, obviously we wanted to sound like our favourite bands, and at the time the band that really drove us towards this kind of sound were bands like Paradise Lost, Type O Negative, Tiamat. Those bands drove us towards the more darker side of metal, and so we decided to have a kind of dark atmosphere in our music because we were really loving those bands.

“Then the more we moved forward the more we did incorporate also different elements from different kinds of rock and metal. Our sound has become a blend of everything we liked from the start in a Gothic environment to the more modern approach to metal. In general we still love the vibe of the dark side. We still like the atmosphere, especially in the atmospheric song, to make that melancholy, and have that kind of vibe.

“I think it will always be part of our sound,” Ferro concludes, “because that’s the place where we’re coming from, and we don’t think that Gothic is only when you have a slow song. It’s a lot about the atmosphere of the song. Sometimes you can have a very dark song from a band like Korn, which is not the classic Gothic metal, but definitely they have that darkness in their songs. It’s important to keep that element more than to feed into the cliché of the genre.”

Category: Interviews