I have been a Lacuna Coil fan ever since my buddy Spoob back in North Carolina convinced me to listen to the band’s 2002 release “Comalies.” The minute the the opening track “Swamped” kicked in I was floored and couldn’t wait to hear what would follow. Track after track I was blown away and just had to hear more. The band had just released their “Karmacode” album so I picked that one up next and again was floored at the musicianship of this band. I also loved that they had two lead singers (male and female) which is something I had never seen before. I was a fan for life!
In 2009, Lacuna Coil released “Shallow Life” and shows once again that they are a band that continues to grow and mature with each release. Lacuna Coil is currently out on the road supporting “The Shallow Life” album and I was honored and excited that lead singer Cristina Scabbia was willing to take the time to do an interview with me. The band was in Madison, Wisconsin and even through a few technical difficulties (bad cell reception on their tour bus), she was a real trooper and an absolute joy to chat with. I hope you’ll enjoy this interview as much as I did!
I have to start out by saying that I’m a huge fan and this is my first big interview for The Brainfart, so I’m super excited about this!
Cristina Scabbia: Great!
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You guys have been out on the road with Five Finger Death Punch. How have the shows been going?
CS: It’s going good. We just started the tour on May 4th. Right now we are in the middle of a couple to dates with Seether, Hell Yeah, Drowning Pool and Five Finger Death Punch. It’s a really good package.
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The last time I saw Lacuna Coil you were here in Atlanta supporting All That Remains. Are there any plans to do another US headlining tour?
CS: I don’t know at the moment because after North America we’re going to be in South America for the first time in some places. I don’t know what is happening after that because we have to play some summer festivals in Europe, so I don’t know if after that we are coming straight to the US again. I hope so though.
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Congratulations on “Shallow Life.” It’s such a great album. It seems that with each album you continue to reinvent yourselves. Is this a conscious effort or is it a natural progression for you?
CS: Thank you! It’s something that’s absolutely natural, but it’s not like we are reinventing ourselves. It’s a sort of evolution because I feel that if you compare “Shallow Life” to our previous works you can still hear that the Lacuna Coil core is there. We’re just incorporating more and more stuff from different other styles of music and incorporating other influences. That makes it possible that people can hear a change in the band. As it always happens, you grow up as a band and we learn how to do things better here and there.
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I’ve seen online in places such as the Empty Spiral (http://www.emptyspiral.net) Message Boards where fans talk about how you don’t perform too many songs from your earlier albums. Is there a reason why you choose not to perform songs from some of your earlier works?
CS: It depends if you’re playing a support show or a headlining show. When you are supporting you don’t have enough time to play whatever you want and that’s the problem. We have out five albums and 2 EPs so for us picking out songs from all this material is really difficult. The old school fans are always asking us for very old material, but every time we play the material there are very few people who know them. Most of the fans are familiar with the stuff from “Comalies” on. We’re touring to promote the latest album, so that’s why we tend to pick up more songs from the latest album. We play some of the classics, but we can’t make everyone happy especially if we don’t have enough time.
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It’s really hard to make everybody happy!
CS: It’s really hard because every time we try to pick up an old song, everybody wants another one. In Europe on the previous headlining tour we tried to squeeze in a very, very old song and the crowd was looking at us like we were aliens. Then we started to play the songs from “Comalies” and “Karmacode” and “Shallow Life” and everybody knew them.
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It’s just natural to play the songs that the majority of your audience is going to know.
CS: Yeah! Well, we’re trying to make everyone happy, but it’s pretty impossible.
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Eh, you make a lot of us very happy, trust me!
CS: <laughs>
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In 2007 you did a duet with Dave Mustaine on the Megadeth song “A Tout Le Monde” which was absolutely brilliant. Are there any other artists that you’d like to do something like that with?
CS: There are a lot of artists that I would love to collaborate with, but I don’t know if it’s going to happen. I’m sure I’m going to do something in the future. So far there is nothing planned because I want to be completely focused on Lacuna Coil. I would love to work with bands like Muse. I would love to work with somebody completely different from our kind of music because that’s what makes things interesting. I like Blur very much as well. I would love to be another character in Gorillaz!
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That’s really great to hear because that leads into another question I wanted to ask you. What are some artists or bands that we would be surprised to hear that you are a fan of?
CS: First of all, I am not a fan of any band in a way that I have the whole discography or I go crazy just to hear the name. I love music and I can appreciate every kind of music. I think Gorillaz is a good one. Then I would say that I like Lady Gaga. I love her transformations. Not really the music itself, which is cool if you want to party, but I just like the whole package of her image and that she can actually play, sing and write her own stuff. I like a little bit of everything. I think that music is something so beautiful that you have to enjoy it in every way. Closing yourself into one type of music only is pretty stupid. I love R&B which a lot of people might not expect from me. I love the black vocalists like Anita Baker and Aretha Franklin.
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Cristina, if they were to make a Hollywood movie about your life, who would you want to play you?
CS: That’s tough because you can never remember actors you like. I can think of different actresses for their talent and others because they are beautiful. It would be cool to be connected because they are way more beautiful than me. For the beauty maybe Kate Beckinsale because she is really beautiful. Maybe talent would be either Julia Roberts or I like very much Barbara Streisand because I think she’s super cool.
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That’s so cool. I actually answered that question for myself and said Jack Black.
CS: Aw, Jack Black rocks, but I would definitely hope he would not play myself. Even if I could find a lot of points in common it would be weird to be connected with Jack Black.
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Whenever I’m driving and Boston’s “More Than a Feeling” comes on I just sing really badly at the top of my lungs. When you’re driving, what song do you sing not caring how badly you’re singing it?
CS: I sing everything that comes out in my mind. The problem is that I have a very shitty stereo in my car. I can’t hear anything because the music comes out completely distorted, so most of the time I just shut it off and I just sing whatever comes up in my mind.
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Oh that’s so great. So you are the radio in your car basically!
CS: Basically yeah because I have a very tiny, funny, shitty car with a shitty stereo, but that’s how I like it.
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What is your current favorite song to perform live?
CS: There is none because it always depends on the reaction from the crowd and that’s what keeps it interesting. Even with songs like “Heavens a Lie” that we’ve played so many times, not that it’s boring, but sometimes it’s getting old. Then you start playing it and everyone’s singing the song with you and you are just really happy to perform the song.The most fun songs to perform are from the latest album just because they are newer and fresher to our ears.
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If Lacuna Coil was hired to be a tribute band and play nothing but another band’s songs, what band would that be?
CS: Probably Type O Negative. It would be really hard because Pete (Type O Negative singer Peter Steele) was unique and nobody can reproduce his voice.
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Are you guys all big Type O Negative fans?
CS: We are fans and we are friends with them and we adore them. We toured together and had the best time of our lives and we’ve loved their music since the beginning. They definitely inspired the band.
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Are there any plans to cover any Type O Negative songs?
CS: Not at the moment. Our bass player just wrote a song that is inspired by the loss of Pete. I hope that we are going to be able to give a good tribute to a wonderful person who’s not here anymore.
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Cristina, that’s it! I hope I didn’t waste your time too terribly bad!
CS: No, no, no! Don’t worry. I apologize for the problems seriously and the rain is not helping with this bad signal.
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Cristina, it’s a pleasure to support you and Lacuna Coil. Would you like to send a message to the readers?
CS: Yeah, we want to thank them for the support because we’ve been around 15 years now and that wouldn’t be possible without people listening to our music, sharing the word and supporting us so we really appreciate it. It means the world to us.
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