Can it really be twenty years since Lacuna Coil delivered their ground-breaking third full-length album “Comalies”? Well, obviously, yes it can because the band have decided to mark this anniversary with a reimagining of that iconic 2002 album, delivered by a more current Lacuna Coil in attitude and sound. This isn’t just “Comalies” with a different guitarist and drummer, this is the album if the band had written and recorded it with the band in the musical place they are now. Reworking what is seen as one of the band’s classic releases is always going to be a dangerous or contentious move, and given that this was the album where they actually updated their sound in the first place, as well as being the album that many believe set them on the path that they are on now, it really could go either way.
It seems like opinions will be divided, and much of that might come down to whether the listener was there the first time, discovering the original album in a different musical era, which is easily forgotten as time passes. I was a fan of “Comalies” the first time around, I was there at the time, so I too have lived with this album for twenty years and I was interested to hear how the band see the album now. It’s difficult to review because I don’t want to spoil any surprises or do a track-by-track analysis, so a basic summary is probably best. The guitars are fuller and heavier as you would expect. If there is drumming tempo change, it leans towards a slower pound, making some tracks even darker – like ‘Heaven’s a Lie’ for instance, which is now almost totally devoid of its memorable chorus as Andrea Ferro favours a harsher vocal delivery throughout a lot of the album. This newer vocal style also gives the tracks another more extreme dimension and is therefore an even greater foil to Christina Scabbia’s clean singing, which tends to just play with the melody lines a little more, or even insert some new ones here and there.
“Comalies” really was a ground-breaking album at the time. Is it possible for me to know whether if I heard these tracks for the first time in this current guise, would they have the same impact? I’d say it’s doubtful, but then I don’t really think that’s the point of this reworking. The songs do already exist, and many of these tracks have been maturing and developing in a live setting for twenty years now. Played this way, they will certainly fit better into a more current Lacuna Coil set, so that’s maybe more important for the band. It’s possible that this is just something the band needed to do for themselves and therefore, also for anyone else who is of a similar mindset. It’s Lacuna Coil’s right to do whatever they want with their own songs and quite simply, if you want to hear them in their original form, go listen to the original. If you want to hear what the band would do with the same ammunition now, then here it is. Maybe this is an album for current Lacuna Coil fans, rather than anyone who just wants a slight updating of the original – this isn’t a spruce up, this is a proper reworking of the album and fans of the original need to be aware of that. It’s also very difficult to mark because I’m aware that I might be marking the songs from memory on the original, so the following mark is literally based on the songs as I hear them right here.
(6/10 Andy Barker)
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