Register Forgot login?

© 2002-2024
Encyclopaedia Metallum

Privacy Policy

Lacuna Coil > Comalies > Reviews > Corimngul
Lacuna Coil - Comalies

Well, well, well. Like keyboards?” - 45%

Corimngul, January 24th, 2005

I didn’t know anything ‘bout Lacuna Coil, until I bought and listened to Comalies. And wow! It has some amazing qualities. I actually listened to it almost every night for a couple weeks as I had sleeping problems. And it proved efficient every time. Ladies and gentlemen, Comalies is a sleeping pill. I won’t guarantee that it’s free from side effects though. Alas, I have never been so indifferent to an album before. Right, catchy choruses, just chords, no riffs, no blast-beats, curtains of synthesizer effects. Does it sound metal? No, it doesn’t. Does it sound good? Well, that one is harder to answer as the disc doesn’t really hit me in the face exclaiming its superiority, nor do I feel physically ill while listening to it.

The problem is that this pop song structure together with a synth rock sound and shitty vocals pass me by, merely noticed. The two best (and heaviest) songs are placed in the beginning of the record, forcing the listener to travel the slope of quality – downhill. And even so they weren’t more than average songs anyway. Lacuna Coil mixes female and male vocals – without succeeding. The female vocalist (Cristina Scabbia) has more use on a magazine cover than as a singer. Range? No. Technicality? No. Any special thing about the voice that make it more enjoyable? Definitely not. It’s just a whiney, shrieky voice that fails both in singing and conveying emotions. The other vocalist is at least more emotive, but alas, besides his incredibly ugly looks he’s a lousy singer. As I was dissing Cristina’s singing, it’s hard to find words to describe Mr. Ferro.

And all over the compositions, there’s this wrapping of synth effects. It’s hard to tell whether it’s there to hide the other band members’ shortcomings or not. I do however suspect so is the case. Lacuna Coil has two guitarists – but where are they? Any averagely skilled musician should be able to do these parts at his own. One wouldn’t think that there was more than one of them unless one knew. And even so, one wouldn’t find this guitarist any special. Usually a band using these amounts of keyboards do it in order to create atmospheres or replacing another instrument. Well, I can’t find much of atmospheres here… There’s literally no need to buy this album since it’s nowhere as good as their former albums. And even then I didn’t enjoy them that much. Unless you need the perfect sleeping pill, stay away. It’s not bad, not good, not average either… Just mainstream indifference.