Lacuna Coil
Dark Adrenaline

In many aspects, Lacuna Coil is an Italian contrary to Sonata Arctica (or the other way around, perhaps). It began a bit faltering and looked as it was going in one direction before steering out in another. The constant performance though has always been that Lacuna Coil is getting better and better and better. And after things had spun for itself for about four years of time following the third album, the international break-through came with the fourth album 'Karmacode', which I still today consider to be one of the best albums released in the previous decade (the 00's). With this album, Lacuna Coil is back with their sixth full length album and this six-man-band (or five-man-band with a woman) feels just as ready as ever to completely blow us away! With amazement.

Let's begin this review with the most unexpected feature: a cover on the classic "that's me in the corner" song by REM, Losing My Religion. On 'Karmacode' Lacuna Coil had a very good cover on Depeche Modes classic "Enjoy The SIlence" song, Enjoy The Silence, and they almost Lacunacoilized it to their own. But here I don't feel remotely the same thing. The band tries to Lacunacoilize this too but they fall flat on this attempt. Not as their own song, not compared to the original is this especially good, but there are eleven own songs on 'Dark Adrenaline' and it's with these the band present themselves best and not in the corner. So let's get in to those.

The first half of this album is very good, I think. Very good! Really good songs are stapled upon each other in a nice pile, like the introducing Trip The Darkness, Give Me Something More and Upside Down. On the second half of the album though, it feels like they've used up their sound and put it like a stamp in your head enough and I feel that I want to hear something more, something different (too). Losing My Religion doesn't do it and none of the others either. Lacuna Coil has this sound, they've had it for the last couple of albums now and this is how they sound. Heavy, rocking and kind of dragging you forward in some sort of atmospheric, gothic landscape like a cemetery in the autumn or wine cellar in the spring. The bass is put quite in the front and it kind of trips forward like it were a sneaking dog on a tin roof put on uneven ground. In the concluding My Spirit, the band even say something in Italian (or Latin, I don't know?) in the middle of the song, which gives the album an even stronger gothic feel.

The thing is that I'm not wishing for anything else than what Lacuna Coil delivers. I don't think it's necessary for them to sound any other way than how they sound. Their choruses are great and the verses are absolutely good enough. Lacuna Coil have an unique sound that, just like The Birthday Massacres' sound, can't really be confused with any other Italian (or other European) sixtet consisting of both a male and female vocalist. I find the problem in the maintenance of interest over the full length of the album. They do interesting songs, varied songs as well but somehow the sound stagnate in the same kind of sounds, which after half an hour starts to feel a bit familiar. And perhaps too familiar...

Most of the songs are pretty similar in tempo and structure and the vocal duty is shared between the high pitched clear female voice of Cristina Scabbia and the more raspy male voice of Andrea Ferro. The only exception is the mid-point ballad End Of Time. The vocal duty is shared here as well, but the tempo is more "ballady". The rest of the songs are somewhat faster than mid-tempo, almost in a tempo we can call Lacuna Coil-tempo since this is the tempo they have in pretty much all of their songs - everyone that's heard this band knows exactly what I'm talking about. There are no surpirces anywhere on 'Dark Adrenaline'.

While I think this album is very good I can't help feeling it's just a little bit predictable. Lacuna Coil has roughed themselves up a bit and makes a heavier album on 'Dark Adrenaline' than before but except for that it's the same old tried concept. Kudos on their ability to create such an unique sound that you clearly hear it's them on the moment you push play, and kudos on these songs because most of these are superb! Great! Fantastic! Except for the previously mentioned I have to mention Intoxicated as one of the peaks of this album. However, I don't feel this album maintain that ecstatic feeling from the beginning to the end and my interest cools a bit towards the end. Yet, this is still the best album released in 2012 that I've heard so far, but I don't think it will continue to be so, or even top ten as the year is summarized. There's just a bit too much of the same concept all over 'Dark Adrenaline'. It's good!

…but a bit unimaginative.