LACUNA COIL's CRISTINA SCABBIA Says New Album 'Black Anima' Will Surprise A Lot Of People

Prior to their July 20 performance at the Rock Fest in Cadott, Wisconsin, Italian metal veterans LACUNA COIL spoke to Lou Brutus of HardDrive Radio about the band's upcoming album, "Black Anima". The follow-up to 2016's "Delirium" will be released on October 11 worldwide through Century Media Records.

Said singer Cristina Scabbia: "We can't really talk too much about it yet, because we literally released the cover a couple of days ago, but we didn't release any songtitle or anything about the record.

"It might sound really cliché if we say that it's gonna be heavier and darker, but this is actually the truth," she continued. "Because I don't think that LACUNA COIL has ever been so heavy. And it will be surprising a lot of people, because we experimented a lot of things differently — vocally and musically.

"It will be revolving around a book and some other stuff that we can't talk about. And 'Black Anima' is basically translated as 'black soul,' 'cause 'anima' is an Italian word that we decided to use as the title."

Added co-vocalist Andrea Ferro: "There's quite a variety of songs, so there's heaviness, but there's also some more melodic tracks that can be more catchy. But it's a very complex record with a lot of different flavors. And we experiment a lot on the lyrics about our lives growing up, experiencing loss or other things that you get more of in the mature age. So we felt the connection with these people that [are] not with us anymore, so we decided to talk about this connection that we feel beyond life."

Continued Cristina: "It's a strange combination of sounds that is really difficult to describe. I guess you guys will have to listen to it, 'cause it's hard to describe."

Asked if the diversity of the new LACUNA COIL music wil lend itself to a dynamic stage show, Cristina said: "Absolutely, because we're touching different themes. And also the styles of the songs — despite being heavy and sometimes even melodic, they're very diverse, one from each other, so that will give us the opportunity to do a lot of different stuff on stage. We have a lot of ideas for the shows that we will play after the release."

Added Andrea: "We've also been working with some artists for some of the visual of the booklets that we can reproduce on the live show for the backdrop and all the special stuff on stage. So we have a lot of ideas. And we're still working on them, because we just literally delivered the master last Monday, or a week ago, basically. And it was actually the last day we could deliver [laughs], so it was right in time, perfectly in time. So Marco [Coti Zelati, bass] has been in the studio, working like crazy to finish the master and the mixing. So we already have all the ideas, but we didn't have a lot of time to actually develop them, because we had to focus on that first. But so the next days, we're gonna make it happen."

2018 marked the 20th anniversary of LACUNA COIL's debut. To celebrate the occasion, they played an exceptional show in January 2018 in London at the O2 Forum Kentish Town. The unique, one-time event was filmed and recorded for "The 119 Show - Live In London", which was released last November.

LACUNA COIL will make a number of festival appearances in summer and will embark on an extended European tour in the fall with ELUVEITIE and INFECTED RAIN.