Review of the Album "Comalies" by Italian Gothic Metal Band Lacuna Coil

Following the release of their best studio album Unleashed Memories, Lacuna Coil had started to show their true talent, creativity, powerful vocals, and great songwriting that made them one of the best Gothic rock bands in the world. I have to admit that at first I did not really like the heavier direction that the band decided to go in. They did become more mainstream as a result of that and 2002’s "Comalies" album is an example of heavier hard rock that is pretty darn good! While Cristina Scabbia’s voice is still good, it is not as good on this album as it was on Unleashed Memories.

The album’s title was explained by Cristina herself when she said that during the recording of the album, the band was working in a different sort of dimension and they wanted to use the word coma but there was something missing. So they combined the words coma and lies.

The opener in this album called Swamped demonstrates the band’s ability to play heavy and make it sound good. The song is basically trying to point out that if we give ourselves sufficient time, we can get a sense of what our destiny is and through that, our shame will be gone. Swamped isn’t even one of the best songs in the album because the album gets better and to its peak with songs such as Self-Deception. Self-Deception is a song about being used and led on by the other person in the relationship. There gets to a point where you know you have to end the relationship and you know that you were not the reason that this relationship went sour. Heaven’s a Lie is basically about a relationship that was built on lies and deception. It is interesting how something like this can happen so often. But if it has happened to you, you know that you are not alone.

I can detect that Lacuna Coil is trying to use a heavier sound for this album and with the start of Comalies, they pretty much abandoned their earlier Gothic rock roots and became a more heavy rock band though not like Dokken or Europe thankfully! These Italians aren’t about standard hard rock, they make things musically more interesting.

Aeon is a short song and the skipping parts that you hear in it are not a mistake. The band originally wrote the song that way. Next comes Tight Rope which is the heaviest song on the album and we even hear the bass in the start of the song by Marco Coti-Zelati. The Ghost Woman and the Hunter is one of the weakest songs on the album in spite of the range and power and range of Cristina’s voice. Next we have another love song called Unspoken which may be the best song in this album! I express my deepest gratitude for having gotten to see this band LIVE just as they were in their good popularity stage in June 2004. I thought in 2002 that Scabbia was the best singer that I had ever heard. There is also an acoustic version of the song that is equally as great. In this song, Andrea Ferro’s vocals really do not detract from the quality of the song. The Prophet Said is another heavy song that is the weakest song on the album. Angel’s Punishment features some death metal style vocals from Andrea. Overall, "Comalies" is a good album but it may be just a notch below 2006’s Karmacode album. The best songs in the album are Self-Deception and Unspoken.