Lacuna coil
We took Lacuna Coil down to London Dungeon for an exclusive playback of new album Black Anima, and a bit of casual scaring. The plague doctors will see you now…
Aline of brave Lacuna Coil fans snakes down the side of London Dungeon, gearing up for a terrifying evening. Tonight they’ll get their own special tour – with extra scares provided by vocalists Cristina Scabbia and Andrea Ferro – before listening to the band’s ninth album, Black Anima. With entry only £10, and all proceeds going to charity Make Some Noise, tickets sold out in minutes. Hammer nervously sneaks inside to find out what’s happening behind the scenes.
5PM: Team Hammer arrive in the dungeon’s school room to find Cristina and Andrea debating takeaway orders for their dinner break; the general consensus is that they need Chinese food. Cristina’s taking photos of the gory medieval torture illustrations around the room – getting any ideas for home decor, Cristina?
5:15PM: Cristina and Andrea pick their costumes to frighten the fans later – two menacing plague doctor outfits complete with spooky masks and robes. Cristina dons her mask and remarks, “This is something we could do onstage!” Too right they could.
5:30PM: Team Hammer head to the dimly lit Torture Chamber to set up for the band’s photos in a grim-looking torture chair. With fake human entrails adorning every fixture, a skeleton bound in chains and a sinister cage that would give Marilyn Manson some production ideas, this room is not for the faint-hearted.
6PM: Andrea and Cristina arrive in the Torture Chamber in their robes. Cristina perches in the chair like it’s a throne, while Andrea plays with the torture implements hanging on the walls… we’re pretty sure those are used to remove body parts, not flip burgers on a barbecue. Both put on their plague masks once again. “It smells like mushrooms,” Cristina laughs. “This is why I don’t wear a mask onstage!” Andrea sounds somewhat less disturbed by this revelation –
“I feel like a mushroom pizza now.” Too late to change your order now, Ferro.
6:30PM: The band take their positions for individual shots with the creepy props. As Cristina clutches a skull, Andrea recalls a similar horror-themed experience. “We were near Universal Studios in California recording an album around Halloween, so we took a weekend off and went to do their horror nights – it’s amazing. They have themed mazes for Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees, Rob Zombie’s Halloween. You can walk around places like this one and all of a sudden they open a sliding door and there’s a two-metre-high Jason with a machete coming out at you!”
7PM: The group return to the school room to have dinner. Andrea makes a beeline for the Chinese takeaway past the pizza boxes. “I’ll wait until I get back to Italy tomorrow to eat some real pizza!” The band retire to their table to plot their impending scares on the fans as they tour around the Dungeon, speaking in Italian so nobody else hears what they’re planning. 7:30PM: With the band and staff stashed away in the school room, the fans make their way downstairs into the Dungeon’s tavern. Andrea regales the behind-the-scenes group with tales of Lacuna Coil’s hijinks at Ozzfest 2004. “We started a movement with Randy Blythe and Corey Taylor where we’d go to the main stage while Black Sabbath were playing, scream for Ozzy and take off our shirts. Sharon started to get pissed because we were disturbing the show, but she couldn’t kick us out because she’d have to kick out Lacuna Coil, Slipknot and Lamb Of God!”
“We screamed at ozzy osbourne. sharon got Pissed at us” andrea FERRO
8PM: The London Dungeon staff give the nod that the first group of Dungeon tour fans will soon be arriving at the best point for the band to scare them. Andrea and Cristina chuck on their robes and masks and head to Plague Street. Blending in with a plague doctor prop already stationed in a corner, the band patiently wait for unsuspecting fans, while Hammer hides behind a cart covered in plague body props. This job is all glamour.
8:15PM: Andrea and Cristina stand perfectly still for 15 minutes and the fans are still not here. The Dungeon’s eerie soundtrack of tolling bells, coughing plague victims and an ominous voice shouting, “Bring out your dead!” really sets the scene.
8:30PM: The fans head to the team’s area as Cristina and Andrea leap into action, but the group aren’t scared at all. One fan quips, “Hi, how are you?” The band run back to the school room to share the news. “This guy came up to me and shook my hand!” Cristina exclaims. “He thought I was an actor!” They reconvene at their table to plot their attack on the second group of unwitting fans.
8:45PM: Everybody returns to their positions as the second group arrives on Plague Street. Thankfully, this lot are scared easily. Fans get up close to Andrea’s mask to inspect his costume before he makes a sudden movement and screams echo through the hallway. Result!
8:50PM: The band head to the school room to show off their scares. “That time was great, we scared a lot of people; four people came in and we scared them, then more came around the corner and we got them too!” Andrea says gleefully. “I heard one lady yell, ‘Holy fucking Christ!’”
9:05PM: The team head to the Guy Fawkes room, where the fans will sit in on the evening’s Q+A session with Andrea and Cristina, hosted by Hammer deputy editor Eleanor Goodman. The band emerge from a mountain of gunpowder barrels to sit in front of their audience. “When were you the most scared in your life?” Eleanor asks. “I don’t get scared easily,” says Cristina. Andrea sounds less resilient – “I’m most scared tonight because it’s the first time we get to play the full record for so many people at the same time!”
9:10PM: Eleanor quizzes the pair on the album’s ominous title, Black Anima. Cristina answers, “It’s a realisation of who we are and what we are both as a band and as human beings right now. It’s very attached to the soul, the energy of the loved ones we left behind – ‘anima’ means ‘soul’ in Italian. We wanted something intense and disturbing at times, because we’ve always been attracted by the darker side of music and art, so ‘black’ was an obvious word choice because we all love black in metal!”
“A lot of people have said this is the most complete record we’ve ever done,” Andrea adds. “Someone described the imagery of the music as a cathedral that turns into a spaceship; I think that means it starts with our more traditional, darker roots but it also goes into the present and our future.”
9:15PM: When asked about the best part of creating this album, Andrea also recalls the hardest aspects. “It’s always interesting and fun for us to write, but recording has to be done in a certain time frame until you can’t postpone it anymore. We often record demos in Marco’s [Coti-zelati, bassist and producer] house first, then we’re never able to sing those parts exactly the same in the studio because we had less pressure in the demos. That’s one part of the job that feels like a job, but the songwriting is much more fun and creative.”
9:25PM: The Q&A opens out to the fans. Attendee Megan wants to know the inspiration for their songs, and Cristina and Andrea agree the response is simply “life”. Andrea expands, “It seems obvious, but we like to start with our personal experiences in the years before we start the songwriting process; we find it really hard to focus on something that isn’t real, we’re not good at creating a story from scratch about something we’ve never really felt.”
9:30PM: A voice in the crowd asks Cristina the meaning behind their lead single, Layers Of Time. “The main meaning is that you can’t take back time, it’s useless to think too much about the past because there’s mistakes or regrets; you can’t do anything about them or fix what you did. Whatever you did has made you whoever you are today, so focus on the present.”
9:35PM: When asked what music motivates her, Cristina replies, “I lost both my parents nine months apart and I didn’t know how to express how sad I was. I listened to music that made me cry so much that it liberated a lot of negative vibes out of me. Music saved me, I will forever be grateful to music.”
9:40PM: Kit asks, “What’s happening with [ex-full-time drummer] Ryan Folden?” The band have recorded Black Anima with drummer Richard Meiz, who Cristina describes as “a great candidate to be a permanent member”, given Ryan’s commitments at home in the States, but Ryan will join the band on their upcoming US tour.
9:45PM: Andrea closes the fan Q&A with a brief message: “Thank you for the support to make this possible.” The album playback begins with opener Anima Nera causing a stir, then Sword Of Anger prompts a wave of headbanging and nods of approval from the fans.
9:55PM: Already-released single Layers Of Time echoes through the Dungeon to a great response from the sea of fans. A voice in the dark room shouts, “I’m loving it!”
10:10PM: Oh no! The album suddenly stops mid-song for a few brief minutes, but proceedings are recovered without too much disruption to the dark Under The Surface.
10:35PM: The Black Anima playback draws to a close with Cristina and Andrea returning to the room to thank attendees again and gather one last reaction from the crowd on the album – a resounding cheer fills the chamber.
10:45PM: As fans file out of the Dungeon, Cristina and Andrea stay to chat and snap selfies with everybody. Reader and recent Lacuna Coil fan Ty Gower has had a great night. “I loved the entire experience; it’s different but it suits them. Loads more bands should be doing this because it would really help them, especially in this digital age – Lacuna Coil are not afraid to do it!”
11PM: As everyone spills out onto the streets of London, lauding their night of terrors and the album playback, long-term Lacuna Coil fan Kit tells Hammer how much she liked hearing the band’s ninth album. “It was amazing, I can’t wait to get an actual copy so I can listen to it!”
Black anima is out october 11 via century Media. see p.113 for dates. for More on London dungeon, see www. thedungeons.com. for More on Make some noise, see www.makesomenoise.com
“Black anima is about the soul of the loved ones We left behind” cristina Scabbia