Album review: Lacuna Coil – Shallow Life

That’s the problem with this reviewing gig in the internet age – if you wait too long, the market does the work for you, as pointed out by an email in my inbox announcing Lacuna Coil‘s invasion of the album chart with Shallow Life entering at #23 on its first day of sale. One thing’s for certain, there’s something about them that a lot of people like.

That’s not a huge surprise, of course; ever since Evanescence demonstrated that the combination of gothy metal tropes with an attractive and talented female singer had the potential to shift units, a steady succession of bands has stepped up to the plate with their own variation on the formula. Lacuna Coil have actually been together a little longer (if Wikipedia is to be trusted on such matters, at least), but with Shallow Life as their fifth studio album to date, they show no signs of imploding mid-tour as Evanescence did.

But what does Shallow Life sound like, eh? Well, it’s goth-metal with an accessible and poppy edge to it, and if that description puts you off then Lacuna Coil are almost certainly not the band for you; while they’ve beefed things up a bit in this latest offering, the guitars rarely dominate over the synths, and the dual vocals of Christina Scabbia and Andrea Ferro are clearly sung, playing off against one another as the songs move in epic and heartfelt directions, delivering angsty and quotable lyrics that will surely soon appear on the back of college homework folders across the English-speaking world, and maybe beyond.

Every time I think someone has finally cracked the pop-metal formula, the game gets raised again, and there’s no denying that Lacuna Coil know all the right buttons to press. Sure, it’s none too original, but the hooks are huge and the melodies memorable, the musicianship and production shine with professional gloss and there are some genuinely interesting tonal choices coming from the keyboard rack – like the disquieting riff that opens “I Survive”, which sounds like a blend of playground chants and muezzin calls. “The Maze” is arguably the most metallic number, featuring a gritty and discordant guitar line between the soaring choruses.

My only beef with Lacuna Coil – and it’s a fairly minor one – is that the admittedly gorgeous Ms Scabbia suffers somewhat from Token Metal Woman Syndrome. That’s not to say she’s a bad singer (as she plainly isn’t), but she’s not an intrinsically metallic singer, and the frequent deployment of lyrical innuendo (it’s astonishing how often the phrase “going down” crops up) doesn’t leave a lot of space to argue that she’s pushing the cause of feminism in an intrinsically chauvinist genre, even if someone were to try to. Gender politics aside, though, it’s Scabbia’s parts that confirm (and strengthen) the appeal of Shallow Life as a pop offering.

For me at least, the acid test is to imagine extracting the vocal tracks and laying them over a non-metal instrument selection. Try with “Not Enough”, for example, and you’ve got a tune that could just as easily have been the début for some pretty chanteuse making a bid for the European charts; replace the heavy guitars with more synths (or just water them down a little more – crunch guitar is much more acceptable in the pop format of late), lighten the drums, and you’re there. Even more so with the slow-dance number “Wide Awake”, which just skates clear of being cloying.

Compare Scabbia to Arch Enemy’s Angela Gossow, and the difference I’m trying to highlight should leap out at you. Gossow wouldn’t sound right if she were to sing anything other than metal songs (and not just because she growls – it’s about conviction and delivery), but Lacuna Coil are gifted with a frontwoman who could probably be doing just fine on her own in the pop markets has she chosen that route. Shallow Life is symphonic, earnest, and irredeemably catchy – and while I wouldn’t buy it for myself, if there was more pop music of its equal I might start listening to the radio again.