Lacuna Coil’s Shallow Life on 2009 Century Media

By Jillian Locke

2009 has certainly been a year of dramatic change ~ from politics to economy to finance ~ all leading to both global and personal transformation. The world of music has been no different. This past April, Lacuna Coil released Shallow Life, a serious step off the beaten path for the Italian metal militia, symbolizing a milestone in their personal growth and progression as a metal band.

Throw away all of your concepts of the band that brought you “Heaven’s A Lie,” and get ready to usher in a new millennia for Milan, Italy’s goth-metal troubadours, with tracks like the first single, “Spellbound,” and “I Like It,” the latter of which clearly spells out the band’s current state of mind. Scabbia protests, “You can kiss your fairy tale away/I like it, like it/Today I’m going to fly/There’s nothing that can keep me on the ground/Touch the sky/I’m free inside/I’m free to be what I like/I’m celebrating my life.”

“I Like It” is pure rock, as are many of the tracks on Shallow Life.

The cover of Shallow Life is a glass hand grenade, perhaps serving as a metaphor for their change from a more metal essence to more of a hard rock sound, sometimes accented with (dare I say?) disco-beats and more traditional melodies, but still packing plenty of heaviness and the unmistakable essence of the group. In an interview on www.blabbermouth.net, Andrea Ferro, the male counterpart to LC’s dual vocals, commented that, “Shallow Life is just a mirror of what you see out there, it’s something you should first see inside of you. It’s a new cycle of songs and it’s more clearly ourselves.”

Recorded and produced by Don Gilmore at NRG Studios in North Hollywood, CA, Lacuna Coil crafted 12 diverse tracks, covering the gamut of personal discovery (“I Like It” and “Maze”), perseverance (“I Survive” and “I’m Not Afraid”), and pain and heartache (“Pain” and “I Won’t Tell You”). Having finished up their first US tour in support of Shallow Life on the American Spellbound tour, with supporting bands Kill Hannah, Seventh Void, and Dommin in July, Lacuna Coil is now in the midst of the HARDDRIVE 2009 North American tour in support of All That Remains, along with Maylene and the Sons of Disaster, Taking Dawn, and From Sword to Sunrise, continuing to spread their metamorphasized sound to the US.

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Retribution ~ A Return to Form for Shadows Fall
By Craig Lindberg

It’s been two years since the release of the Shadows Fall breakthrough album Threads of Life propelled the Massachusetts natives into the metal mainstream. That’s two years of constant touring, festivals, interview schedules, general mayhem and, of course, writing. The latter has culminated in Shadows Fall’s latest release, Retribution, for Everblack/Ferrett Music that is indeed deserving of its title. What “Threads of Life” was lacking, as some lamented, has been made up for in spades on Retribution.

“We wrote a lot of this album together,” says Brian Fair, enigmatic frontman for Shadows Fall. “We just got together in the jam space and fed off each other, there is definitely a heavier, faster element to this album.”

Fans of the band’s earlier work should not be fooled by the haunting, acoustic melodies of track one, “The Path of Imminent Domain;” as signature SF as this song is, it is short lived and segues into the true vibe of Retribution.

Shadows Fall seem to have found their swagger again and let it be know on tracks like “My Demise” and “War,” which showcase not only a return to the band’s roots but also the tremendous musicianship that has helped set SF apart from others in their genre.

“We just let it rip on this album,” says Brian. “Jon would get through ripping a tremendous solo and the rest of us would just sit back and say ‘F*ck Yeah!’”

The first single, “Still I Rise,” combines some of the old with some of the new, a nice blend of where the band has been and where it is going.

“Elvis [Baskette] really pushed us vocally on this album, Matt really has this Sebastian Bach type voice and Elvis really wanted to unleash him on some of the harmonies.”

From start to finish, Retribution never lets up or leaves one disappointed.

While there is no discernable, so-called mainstream hit on Retribution as there was in “Another Hero Lost” off 2007’s Threads of Life, the entire album is laden with hooks in songs like “King of Nothing” and “Picture Perfect.”

The guys in Shadows Fall also cite some old school influences in the writing of Retribution: “We were doing the Overcast reunion for a while and we seemed to really enjoy that vibe,” according to Brian. “I think it helped bring some brutality to this album.”

The bottom line, if you’re a lover of all things dark and heavy, you will love this album. From beginning to end, Retribution is a reawakening, the rebirth of the beast that is Shadows Fall.