Lacuna Coil Interview
Interview with Andrea Ferro of Lacuna Coil
Words by Rant Chick / Photo by Enrico Caputo
Lacuna Coil made history when new album Shallow Life reached number 16 on the US Billboard Top 200 charts: the band’s highest Billboard chart entry as well as the highest Billboard debut in the history of Century Media Records in the USA. The band recently kicked off its Shallow Life European tour, and Lacuna Coil vocalist Andrea Ferro got real with Clink before the band’s London performance at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire.
Start of Shallow Life European tour. How do you find playing in London?
It’s usually hectic because there is so much press to do during the day and by the time we go on stage we’re tired because we’ve been talking all day but the crowd is really amazing.
Yes, you have a lot of fans in London
Yes and every time we come here they have so much energy and the show is always good. The days are just long. We started this morning with TV press and then there were a lot of interviews during the day, so by the time we have to perform we are a bit tired but the crowd leads us on and we always have a good show.
Do you have a favourite place to play in Europe?
The UK is our favourite place. It is always good here. We also enjoy playing in Italy but we don’t play there very often.
Being Italian – coming from a country with a great cultural heritage and history – how has this inspired your music/lyrics (If at all)?
I don’t think it really inspires our music. We always listened to bands that were from the UK or from America; like Iron Maiden, AC/DC and Metallica. We don’t typically listen to Italian artists. There are some Italian artists that we like but most of the contemporary music in Italy is pop, which we don’t really care about. We like mostly metal and rock. Our songs are inspired by the way we are, the way we grew up, our opinions about life – we are inspired by that essentially.
Shallow Life, which was released last year, is the band’s highest Billboard chart entry (as well as the highest Billboard debut in the history of Century Media Records in the USA) – by hitting the US Billboard Top 200 charts at number 16. To what do you attribute the success of this album?
It’s hard to tell because of the way we work: we don’t tend to repeat the same album. We like to change styles and try to be open-minded – to go where the inspiration takes us, so this record is a little different. I don’t see a drastic difference but surely there are some differences just because of the fact that we have been working in America – recording in America with an American producer – which has been a different style of working. We have been quite open-minded in the song writing on this album so we have gone places where we have never been before.
You have funked up your sound with some groove and tempo.
Yes, and we actually did 30 or 40 demo songs, some of which were maybe a little too different from our usual style so we have chosen the 15 or 20 songs that are the most meaningful and not just different for the sake of it. The record has different beats and that possibly attracts different types of listeners – more people, or different people, enjoy the record. We have also noticed at our live shows that we have a new generation of fans. Of course we have some of the old ones – the people who have always been there and will always be there – but we have new kids, a younger crowd that we have never had before, so this record sort of signals a new beginning. We will keep going but, in a way, also begin a new path.
Would you say it is more commercial/accessible than your previous albums?
I think it appeals to more people probably because it’s not too heavy or too dark but I also think that our music has never been super extreme. We have never been a really heavy band or an extreme band. If you listen to our first EP it is probably softer than Shallow Life because it doesn’t have any of the double bass, the production was clean and the songs were quite rocky. So I don’t see a drastic change in the heaviness of the band. We have always combined a little metal, a little rock, a little darkness, and those three elements are still present on the new album. We have shaken things up a bit but there is a more straightforward structure in the songs. Some of the songs might be a lot softer and lighter but I think that the essential elements of the band are still there. So maybe the album is more commercial because the songs have been produced in a way that works well on the radio and TV – giving us a bit more radio play. On the other hand, if you see a live show the new songs are performing pretty well in the set.
How are the live audiences reacting to the new songs?
They are able to sing all of the words, that’s the main thing. This is because the producer has been very careful about the pronunciation of the words: we rewrote all the lyrics – we kept the main themes – but we rewrote them in a way that the audience is able to understand what we mean. In the past, maybe due to the fact that English is not our mother tongue, we tried to play a bit more with poetry, which is good but it is also more closed – not everybody can relate – whereas with the lyrics on the new album, audiences sing the words from the verse as well as the chorus. One of the main differences between this album and the others is how hard we have worked on the lyrics and we have learned how difficult it is to write lyrics that are not stupid and mean something to the people, who will then want to scream with us – to sing the words loudly with us.
Shallow Life’s lyrics are strongly self-affirmative (confident/positive) – a personal statement of independence and survival. What inspired the tone of the album?
This record, especially, is a strong statement about not being afraid, about taking your own direction – this is what we have done musically. We could have been safer by repeating the formula of Comalies or Karmacode but keeping the same vibe wouldn’t have been true to our art. We like to do what inspires us in the moment. We still love Karmacode, we still play the songs live, but Karmacode was our musical point of view in 2006/7 and now we have a different one. We’ll probably have a different point of view for the next album as well because the more you learn, the more you try to incorporate stuff into the music and try to push it forward, and that’s the way we are. Some bands can repeat their formula over and over, and it works well for them. I am not saying that it’s right or wrong, just that it’s not the way we perceive art or music. It’s a hard choice but you have to take some chances and I think that if you read the lyrics you can really tell that the album is about survival for us. The first song, Survive, is about a personal crisis we had before writing the album, not in the band, but because we are getting older and face another two or three years of touring and being away from home without family and friends, and it’s a difficult choice. It’s not an easy choice: the positive aspect is the fans who come to the shows and communicate with us but on the other hand, the negative aspect is missing our families. We are not a band that sells millions of records and we are not millionaires – we live for our music and it’s great but we aren’t just doing it to get rich. It’s a passion and if you don’t have the passion it won’t work and that’s why it was important to release the album knowing that this is what we still like, this is what we still want to do. We will still go strong because we have something to say and something we want to bring out, and while people are listening and we are having fun we will keep going.
I’d like to talk about two of your videos:
The video for I Won’t Tell You has just been released: it has a great energy. Was it fun filming with all your fans? Tell Clink readers about the experience.
It was cool because we have never had the fans directly involved in a video. We put out an announcement on facebook and myspace asking for volunteers. We needed only 100 people and so we couldn’t take everybody although the response was good. The fans we chose turned out to be pretty good actors actually even though we didn’t have any casting, we just accepted the first 100 people that responded to the message – there was no selection process. So it was cool that they all showed up and were very different people – some more metal guys, some more alternative – and it was cool to see that our crowd is made up of different types of people who all relate to our music. We had a good time, and other people worked harder than the band. We did our thing in the morning and then they had to come in and work all afternoon doing the special effects. It was cool. We shot the video in Milan in December when we came back from the American tour, and used the same director who worked on the Spellbound video, which was the first video for the album. This one was way darker – kind of the opposite of Spellbound, which was meant to be over the top (shiny) because we wanted to communicate the shallowness of a shallow life – the superficial part of life. This one was a counterbalance to that as it reflects the darker side of life, which is probably a more real side: one that everybody lives – the depression, the anger and the stuff that we talk about in the lyrics. But in some ways, Spellbound and I Won’t Tell You are connected, not in terms of the lyrics, but the two videos are two faces of the same metal.
The music video for I Like It is also great – really fun and entertaining. How do the video and the song fit in with the album’s message/theme?
It is about independence and about being free to take chances in life. And that’s what we have done with the album and even with the promo pictures, which not everybody got because they were different: we were dressed as pimps or hip-hop artists. A lot of people really liked them but a lot of people didn’t get it and thought we were changing our look. But it was just a representation of the theme. It’s not that we will dress like that for our live shows or in real life. It was to shake things up a bit and challenge ourselves as well as listeners. In terms of the video, we have never done a funny video. It has always been very serious – usually quite dark, with special effects. And we like those: I Won’t Tell You is more like the old videos but the tone of the I Like It video was necessary for the song. Musically it is quite a light song – a nice catchy song (poppy) – and we didn’t want to put too much pressure on the song so we kept the video fun. It means something but it is also nice to see – don’t take it too seriously, it’s just a joke.
Social media has had a big impact on the music industry – the way music is marketed. Do you feel that it is an important marketing tool?
We use it as a marketing tool and in our private lives as well. I’m not a maniac, I mean I don’t tweet but I like to update my personal facebook. I use it to communicate with fans and friends. The cool thing is that you can maintain a constant relationship with people by giving them hints about what is going on – social media helps to keep the relationship between fan and artist alive. On the other hand, people are also very shallow: one day they are very interested and the next day they don’t care. Myspace was wild a few years ago and now everybody is on facebook. Myspace is mostly for bands, movies and companies – it took a completely different direction. Facebook is easier to maintain on a personal level but for bands myspace is much better. So it’s cool to use social media but I don’t want to abuse it. I don’t want to be forced to update every time I use the restroom or go to see a movie – okay well, if I really like the movie perhaps I will share that but people don’t have to know where I am every five minutes. That’s too much, whether you are a famous person or not. Social media has to be used carefully I think.
How much attention do you pay to what’s written about you (the band) online, especially with the boom of the blogosphere?
I don’t really care. There are so many opinions out there, positive and negative, and you can’t take what people say really seriously (in a positive or negative way) because they are just opinions. What people write can be really funny sometimes, especially when they exaggerate – even fans, and it’s funny to see how people take it too seriously. You have to take the comments ironically because if you get mad about whatever people say it restricts the way you live your life. Rather than thinking ‘omg they hate me’, remember that it’s just people chatting – as they have always done in pubs, before the internet. It’s just stupid that some people take it seriously. Take it in a light way – it can be fun. Who cares … you have to be yourself: focus on what you do and believe in what you do. If you let everybody get in your way you will never go anywhere. If we had listened to the criticisms of our first album we would never have made the others. If somebody has a positive criticism: ‘I don’t like this because of this and that’ then that’s fine and I am going to listen to it and improve for sure but if people are just insulting then it’s like ‘okay whatever’.
Are there plans for the band to play in any of this year’s summer festivals?
Yes, after this tour is done we will have a short break – go back to the US and then come back here for the summer festivals in June/July and then maybe do some more shows in the UK.
Some Randomness:
Do you have a favourite Lacuna coil song?
To be honest, because they are all our babies it’s hard to choose. I like them all for different reasons. I do like some songs better than others but I don’t really have one favourite.
Lacuna Coil has a cool style – what is your favourite item of clothing?
I like jeans and Cristina would say shoes – everybody would say something different. We like to look decent, not to look like some old hard-rockers or bikers. We like to keep it fresh without going crazy about what’s fashionable or trendy. We like to look good, like everybody else does. We try to have style but it’s important to have your own style, whether it’s more rock, metal or whatever – just a little bit of your own style to represent yourself.
What is your favourite band (at the moment)?
I don’t have a favourite band but I really like a band that we toured with in America on recent tour called Maylene and the Sons of Disaster. They’re a cool mix of Southern rock (with banjos) and big 80s choruses and also metal choruses as well as the vibe of bands like Underoath – like modern rock metal. The band mixes all these elements and I find it quite interesting. And also Dommin, the band that is opening this tour – they opened for us in the US as well. They are a new band and for being such a young/new band they already have a distinctive sound. They mix a bit of the rockabilly image with a darker Type O Negative feel and a keyboard sound, and they are very gothy. I like the fact that they are so young but they already have an idea and an image that is different from what is trendy at the moment. I think that they will probably struggle in the beginning because they aren’t emo – they aren’t following the trend of the moment – but after two albums, if they keep going, they will become a unique band and will be around for a long time … if they keep going of course.
What is the coolest thing about being in a band – being in Lacuna Coil?
I like the fact that you get to travel and meet people, which gives you a fresh point of view about what’s going on, on both sides of the ocean. It gives you an open mind and allows you to live life more knowledgeably. For example, our crew is a mix of American and British people and so we see that the way that they approach things in life which is a little different from our culture, which is more of an ancient, conservative culture. So it’s cool and you become a more mature person because you have a chance to experience different cultures, food, places and music … everything.
March 30th, 2010
Solid interview, really good read and great questions