I sat down with Andrea Ferro from Lacuna Coil after their set at the Welcome To Rockville Festival, we talked about the band’s new album, horror film inspirations and more. Lacuna Coil are currently out on tour in support of their brand new release entitled, “Broken Crown Halo”, out now via Century Media Records.
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Q – Your latest album “Broken Crown Halo” has been out for a little over three weeks now, how has the reception been so far?
Andrea – It’s been really good. We’d been touring already for a month prior to the release, so we’ve had to introduce the new songs to the fans, we also put a couple lyric videos online which we will soon have a proper video for. So far so good, it’s just the beginning, we’ll see how it’s all going to work. It’s never easy when you already have a few albums out, when you go to release a new one you have to keep things fresh and interesting for ourselves as well as the fans.
Q – The album was produced by Jay Baumgardner(Sevendust, Evanescence, Papa Roach). How was it working with him on the record?
Andrea – It was great actually. In the beginning we were meant to record with him in his L.A studio, and for personal reasons we needed it to be in our home country in Italy. So we decided to ask him to join us in our home town, which was actually his first time recording out of North America, so it was a new experience for everybody. We had a great vibe, he’s kind of different than any other producer we’ve been working with before, he’s a guy who looks more at the big picture than, for example Don Gilmore who we had for the previous records, he was very into the little details, while Jay is more listening to the overall big picture.
Q – What are the lyrical themes for “Broken Crown Halo” ?
Andrea – We wanted to talk about real life, that’s what we’ve always been taking inspiration from. We talked about the last couple of years for the band has been kind of rough on a personal level with some of the band members, nothing crazy, just some ups and downs, us getting older. We decided to present the songs using a lot of metaphors, horror movie characters etc, we’ve been watching a lot of old school Italian horror movies lately, not strictly horror but also B-movies in general. So we used a lot of parallels and force from some of the characters from those movies and portrayed them in real life, we’re talking about reality with a little more of a horror approach with the lyrics.
Q – I believe someone in the band has recited the band Goblin as a big influence on your band’s writing, would you say that’s correct?
Andrea – Yeah, that’s always been a big influence, mostly for the arrangements we have with the keyboards. We’re all friends with Claudio Simonetti , who is the main composer for Goblin. They made pretty much at least 90% of the soundtracks to horror movies we loved growing up, so it was natural for a darker sort of band as we are. We’ve always taken influence from them, maybe even a little more so with this new album.
Q – The album hit #27 on the US Billboard top 200 and #5 on the US Hard Rock charts. Were you surprised by this, or did you expect the album to do so well?
Andrea – We were positive because the last album did pretty well, we did expect something like that, but you never know, it all depends on what other records are out around the same time. It’s really all just numbers, if it sells better than most but eventually ends up disappearing and you’re not touring, then it really doesn’t mean anything. It’s important to have it, but not as important as it used to be.Nowadays you sell fifteen or twenty thousand you’ll crack the top twenty, once it used to be one or two hundred thousand at least. It’s still relatively important and it’s great to have, it’s better to be there than not, but in general it’s more important that the fans are receiving the record, especially if it’s people who are just now discovering you. Like with today, these kinds of festivals, it will present the band(s) to a newer crowd.
Q – Your albums occasionally feature covers (i.e. REM, Depeche Mode), would you say that these are artists that particularly influence you, or do you just enjoy their music in general?
Andrea – Well we all grew up in the 80’s, and those bands were very big at the time for us, as well as bands like The Cure. When we considered a song for a cover, we don’t want something that’s closer to our style. The Depeche Mode cover was a more dynamic version of the song, heavier, while the R.E.M version was more introspective version of the song. It’s always cool to give a different interpretation of a song, we don’t want to do a cover that sounds similar to us. It makes no sense for us to do a Metallica cover because it’s already metal, it’s always better to take a rock son, maybe a new wave song and turn it into a metal song. We don’t want to make a better version of a song, we want to make it our own interpretation of the song.
Q – The band dedicated the song “One Cold Day” to former guitarist Claudio Leo (who unfortunately passed away back in December). Did that come as a shock to you when you initially found out, and why was it important to you to dedicate this song to him?
Andrea – Claudio was not only just a former guitar player, but he was a friend, we were friends even before we started the band. We would visit shows and bars in Milan, we would go on vacation together and travel around Europe, he was a friend. Even after we split after the first couple of years where there was a bit of bad blood when we just didn’t understand what was going on, we became friends again. He even came to some of our shows, he also had a band called Cain that opened for us in Europe. So when we found out that he had cancer, he was really young when he died at only 42, it was really a shock to us. And when he got sick, not even a year later he was gone, it was very shocking and it was sad on a human level. We were friends, and he was a great human being, and we always had a great time with him. We just felt that it was a natural thing to dedicate the song to him.
Q – What’s the best concert you’ve ever attended that you didn’t play?
Andrea – There are so many. I like the shows in the very small clubs that the big arenas, because sometimes the bands get lost in the production, but of course if you play an arena you have to have something on stage like fire or whatever. But I think they’ll get used too much to not moving at all and trying to get people going as much. One I went to recently was a guy named Adam Bomb, he’s a musician from the 80’s, he looks like he belongs in Kiss, and he does this show in between the cover songs, and he played every day for a year almost, I think he has the world record for most consecutive shows in every time bar in America. He just has such great energy inside, and he’s probably in his 50’s now. But you see this guy on stage, and he’s like rock n’ roll incarnated, it wasn’t really my kind of music as much, but seeing him in his 50’s rocking out so hard and willing to be there in that lifestyle, it was incarnating rock n’ roll for me.
Q Do you think you can see yourself still doing this when you’re 50 or 60?
Andrea – I hope so(laughs), you never know. We’ll maybe slow down a little bit, and maybe not play in this heat, but we definitely still have that passion, and we still have that fire and will to go on. We just released an album and we definitely want to keep writing, we have a new drummer, it’s a whole new lineup, so it kind of feels fresh, so we want to go into the studio with him write some different stuff. It’s important to have that will to go on, if you don’t have it then you better just quit, it’s not the right lifestyle if you don’t want it.
Q – What are some of your favorite music releases from the past year?
Andrea – I’ve discovered a couple of great bands on this tour actually, the guys from Nothing More are really cool, also the band Kyng, as well as the band Twelve Foot Ninja. I really like them too, they’re kind of a breath of fresh air, I hear a bit of Faith No More, a different kind of crossover. Those three are my favorites at the moment.
Q – What’s the one band you’ve never played shows with that you wish you could tour with/open for?
Andrea – Rammstein would be really cool, I really love the fire show that they have. I saw them the very first time they played Italy in a tiny club, there were many one hundred people there, and they still had the full fire show going on already. And later on I saw them in an arena and it was still great. But when I first saw them, they were already big in Germany but not in Italy, so they played the small club almost for free, they had such a cool fire show going on. It was amazing.
Q – Thanks for taking the time to talk with us. Is there any last thing you’d like to say to any fans of supporters of Lacuna Coil?
Andrea – I would just like to thank everybody for the support. If you haven’t checked us out before you can at lacunacoil.it the website, on Facebook or Instagram if you like the music. You can write to us and we’ll answer.
