Lacuna Coil – Delirium

[nyrating]

22nd May 2016 Thomas Nielsen Album Reviews 0

My goodness! Cristina and the boys certainly put the pedal to the metal when they wrote the eleven songs for their 8th studio album, ‘Delirium’. It’s as if there’s a bit more of, well, everything.

Already with album opener The House of Shame, you get a feeling that Lacuna Coil anno 2016 are more intense than ever. The tune is heavier than what we’re used to from the Italians. Their nu metal influence is very, very obvious (I’d even say that what they do here sounds a lot like Sepultura around their Roots phase), and Andrea has a predominant role. Not only that, he sounds heavier and better than I remember he ever did before. This stays true of the rest of the album. Is it me or is Cristina higher pitched than usual? Even here, there’s more intensity.

I think we’ve seen a lot of older bands off late who’ve shown younger bands who’s who and what’s what – Paradise Lost being a good and relevant example when we talk of Lacuna Coil. The Italian gothfathers belong to a younger generation, I know, but they’ve after all been around for a good two decades now, and they’ve also been through their creative ups and downs. Now they’ve reached that point where they simply have to find the core of themselves, a process that is ironically helped by three members leaving and a new drummer joining with new energy.

The result is an album that makes them sound like a band who have something to fight for. They sound like a band with fresh energy and power. They sound as if they’ve said ‘fuck it’, taken the goth genre recipes they’ve helped give life over the past twenty years and added extra metal vitamins. Although ‘Delirium’ is a homogenous album with a clear, red line sound-wise and maintaining that characteristic and easily recognisable Lacuna Coil style, it manages to keep me interested throughout the album like none of the previous albums apart from ‘Karmacode’ managed to do (their 2006 effort has so far been my favourite). As I said before, there’s simply more of everything, and that’s probably how Lacuna Coil are meant to be: Epic, bombastic, heavy, yet at the same time melodic and fragile.

44 minutes of awesome metal, signorina and signori.

Track listing:
1. The House Of Shame
2. Broken Things
3. Delirium
4. Blood, Tears, Dust
5. Downfall
6. Take Me Home
7. You Love Me ‘Cause I Hate You
8. Ghost In The Mist
9. My Demons
10. Claustrophobia
11. Ultima Ratio

Playing time: 44 minutes

Release date: 27^th of May, 2016

Label: Century Media

Website: www.lacunacoil.it

About Thomas Nielsen 1051 Articles

When my old buddy Kenn Jensen asked me if I wanted to contribute to the new site he had created, then called powermetal.dk, I didn't hesitate. My love for metal music was and is great. I wrote my first review during the summer of 2004 (Moonspell's 'Antidote' album). In 2015, I took over the editor-in-chief role.