Italian goth metal legends Lacuna Coil further refine their light-and-shade majesty on typically heavy 10th studio album, Sleepless Empire.
Before putting yourself back together, you tend to spend some time peering back into the ruins, at the distance travelled. This sense of emergence, from both personal loss and of frustration with an impersonal, social media-driven world, seems to have informed Sleepless Empire.
Lacuna Coil are a band who have constantly developed rather than transformed. Compared to their last album of original material, 2019’s colossal Black Anima, this is partly a continuation of that music’s underlying ruin, but like all the Milan group’s albums, it’s a subtle realignment of that energy. For the most part, they’ve simply got heavier. The central theme in Oxygen and Gravity is the battle for clarity in an ever more complex society, but the real unifying factor is the sound. All 11 songs breathe together and thrive when heard as a whole.
Drilling percussion and electronics fire up opener The Siege, but it’s the almost preternaturally smooth transitions between Andrea Ferro’s throaty roar and Cristina Scabbia’s melodic keen that nails it. Having done this for so long – more than quarter of a century, in fact – the duo have perfected this to the point where all you can do is grin in admiration. Cristina’s voice elevates Oxygen to the skies, finding and creating beauty from riff-heavy darkness, but the album’s standout track must be I Wish You Were Dead, a goth anthem sharp-fanged with irony. It’s also one of those tunes you’ll be cursing as it replays in your head while you’re trying to sleep.
Lamb Of God’s Randy Blythe and New Years Day’s Ash Costello guest on Hosting The Shadow and In The Mean Time respectively, but frankly you hardly notice – these are Lacuna Coil songs through and through, the duo’s presence just a sign of how respected the boundary-pushing Italians truly are. Sleepless Empire is the work of a unit that needs no outside help, and its lingering notes of darkness just make you want to play the whole thing again.
Verdict: 4/5
For fans of: In This Moment, Spiritbox, Amaranthe
Sleepless Empire is released on February 14 via Century Media
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