LACUNA COIL Singer: 'We've Never Really Changed — An Evolution Isn't A Change'

Ruben Mosqueda of Oregon Music News recently conducted an interview with singer Cristina Scabbia of Italian heavy rockers LACUNA COIL. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

Oregon Music News: Your third album, "Comalies", was a breakthrough album for you in North America and brought you continued success around the world. Did you know that the album was going to be huge for you?

Cristina: No, it just happened. If you recall that by the time we did Ozzfest in 2004, "Comalies" had already been out for about two years. We had already established a following in Europe and we had done various tours with bands like OPETH. After Ozzfest, the song "Heaven's a Lie" took off and radio picked the song up; that helped a lot of people to become familiar with LACUNA COIL.

Oregon Music News: In the years since older fans feel that they've been alienated as a result of the LACUNA COIL's continued "growth" with albums like "Comalies", "Karmacode", "Shallow Life" and now with "Dark Adrenaline". What do you make of such a statement?

Cristina: People's perception is like this. They were there from the beginning so they are connected to that period of LACUNA COIL. I can't think of many bands with a long career that are currently appreciated for their last album. To be honest with you, we've never really changed — an evolution isn't a change. We never stopped using heavy guitars, we never stopped playing heavier songs, I think we might write "heavier" music now than we did in the past. I think for some reason people think that our early albums are "more metal," but if I think about a song like "No Need To Explain" — which we'll be playing tonight — that was not a heavy song. If you take a close listen you could say it was almost a pop song. I think people's perception regarding our change has something to do with our look. If you look at "Shallow Life", people didn't understand the way we were dressed — they were costumes. They were meant to make fun of the "shallow life." I was dressed up like a "pop princess" and Andrea [Ferro] was dressed up like a "hip-hop pimp." People would come up to us and say, "You guys changed your look?!" I said, "What the fuck?! You think we're really going to be dressed up like that?! Didn't you see that we even enhanced my boobs on the photos just to make fun of this fake world?!" I bet you if we would have gone with the typical black look people wouldn't have said a thing. That's frustrating because you have to go with the most obvious choice, the more bland choice, so people will get it.

Oregon Music News: "Dark Adrenaline" was pushed back on a couple of occasions. Did you go back and re-cut or record more material?

Cristina: No, what happened was that the IN FLAMES record was doing very well, I think it was number one on the German charts and that affected everybody. The label wanted to put a lot of time on promoting our new album, but they had a chance to promote a band who was currently selling very well. During all of this we took the opportunity to remix "Dark Adrenaline" so the final product was released the way that we really wanted. I think it worked out very well, we postponed it for a little bit but we ended up with the album that we really wanted.

Read the entire interview from Oregon Music News.