Italian Gothic Metal band Lacuna Coil are set to play SWG3 on 21st October as part of their tour and we were extremely lucky to catch up with vocalist Andrea Ferro for a quick chat before their ‘In The Meantime’ tour starts. We spoke about their upcoming tour, their hobbies, mental health and of course it would be rude to not talk about pizza with an Italian right!?
Check it out below!
First of all, thanks so much for joining Discovery Music Scotland today, we are very, very much looking forward to welcoming you back to Scotland as you play in Glasgow in October. So for any new fans could you start by describing Lacuna Coil in three words?
Yeah, I think dark, heavy could be another word, and I was about to say epic, but maybe epic is too much, maybe more like, they call it alternative metal. So maybe alternative can be a good word. So alternative, dark, heavy, that can be a description of more or less the elements that forged our sound, we were, depending on the songs, and obviously on the era of the band, we were coming from the gothic metal scene of the beginning of the 2000s and of the 90s, and developed more into an alternative kind of band, which is kind of heavier now than it used to be. But we still preserve a lot of the darker atmosphere, and we like also the lyrics to be very reflective, and introspective a little bit, and give people some topics to think about, more than the everyday facts.
Yeah, absolutely, and I would say that epic is also a good word to describe you guys, I think you’re pretty epic. With the new album that’s going to be coming out, does it focus on any specific theme or topic?
Yeah, we always try to, especially on the most recent productions, we always try to have a main topic, let’s say a generic concept, but very open. It’s not a concept in the old school days, like in the 70s when albums were developing a story from start to finish for example a romance or a movie, but it’s more about having one common theme that runs through the songs, the graphics, the merchandise, the stage props, and everything that is going to be part of the tour. We want to have a common theme that unites all the new songs, and in the look, in the sound, and for this specific album we have felt for the first time maybe sort of a clash of generations, where we are in the age now where we have seen and we were born in the analogue world, and then we saw the switch towards the digital world where we live today with the connectivities of social media, the internet, wifi etc. We are a generation that crossed both worlds. When we were born there was almost nothing of the internet, and now there’s only mostly internet. So, we made a reflection on how society has changed and how much people now live through this dogma of the digital world with not really matching reality, you know, when you go back to reality, when you go back to hang out with real people, when you go back to creativity from scratch, all this great technology that we have, sometimes it doesn’t match the life of people, that’s why there’s a lot of crisis of identities and people don’t know where they belong anymore. I think we’re lucky that we have been able to grow up in a way, a more realistic world. So that’s the main reflection around the theme and how our society has developed in this direction, but then obviously every song has a different specific theme but this is the common ground where we start to move from.
If you’re allowed to name it, do you have like a favourite song on the upcoming album?
I mean, they’re still fresh enough that I kind of like all of them, but then I’m sure in six months I’m gonna hate all of them or most of them, but at the moment I’m still in a phase where I like almost all of them. We have some more diverse songs that I really like to listen to because I know in the beginning you always want to listen to the bangers, the heavier ones, the ones that make your head bang, but then the more you listen to it, the more you’re gonna go to the ones that in the beginning maybe you weren’t so sure about, and then they become some of your favourites because they develop in a different style, and in a different way.
So there is one song called ‘Sleep Paralysis’ that I really like, and it’s more of a slower song, but it has a very interesting guitar job and it’s quite “epic” as we were saying before.
Absolutely, and you guys have toured for around 25 to 30 years now, so comparing back from the early days to now, what would you say is the biggest difference between touring then to touring now in 2024?
I think the beauty of the live concert, I think it’s still intact. I feel the same energy, the same sensation when I go on stage and I hear the crowd going, you know, it’s amazing, and then when they sing the words, it’s amazing.
Obviously, there are differences, like people now have all the phones up and record a song, but it is the way. Things like that or live streams weren’t happening 20 years ago, but, I think besides that, the contact, the exchange of energy, it’s still very alive, and I think it’s very important that it stays that way because the uniqueness of going to a live show is the fact that you can’t reproduce that exchange of energy. You can see live show footage online or stream a concert but it’s not the same. We have done live streaming also during COVID from a big venue, but without the crowd, it felt like filming a video clip, it’s not real interaction and all the energy was missing. It was good because that was the maximum we could do at the time due to the circumstances, but I think overall it’s much better to see the people in their faces, and you get to scream with them, you get to move with them, and that’s something you can’t replace. And that has stayed the same way from when we started to now.
Maybe the way of touring has changed more on a technical aspect. The way we are having easier lives by touring, for example, if I stay two months in the United States, I can talk to my wife every day, I can talk to my mom every day, andit’s much easier for bands to tour in terms of connectivity and not be lost somewhere. Back in the day, you could disappear for three days because there was no phone connection and nobody knew where you were, they just knew you were in Australia somewhere, but, nowadays obviously we all have phones and the internet so it’s much easier, much more comfortable. But I think in terms of the live shows, the most important thing is still there.
Yeah, and I think I can speak with confidence that the Glasgow crowds will 100% bring all the energy for you guys in October.
Yeah, we always had a great, great time in Scotland, Glasgow especially, because it’s the place we’ve been playing the most in Scotland, usually the Scottish show, it is Glasgow. Sometimes we’ve done other cities, but most of the time it’s Glasgow, and we started from King Tuts the very small bar, and to the bigger events like the Barrowlands, and it’s always a great show, it doesn’t matter if it’s tiny or big, it’s always a great exchange of energy! I think there are some similarities between the way Italian people enjoy the show to the Scottish people, I think there’s a lot of warmth that it’s common, you know, even if you’re very North compared to us.
Absolutely! And while we were talking about touring if you were to co-headline a tour one year with a band, who would it be?
Well, I could say the most obvious names, could be Iron Maiden, Metallica, and Rammstein, obviously, but we always had this weird thing about opening for Lady Gaga, it would be something so unusual! And she’s a rocker, she writes great songs, she’s a great performer, we know she loves metal, so I don’t know how we could go down, in terms of the crowd and everything, but I think it would be interesting to see.
And what sort of music are you listening to in your own time? What artists or bands are you listening to currently?
I try to do a mix. Sometimes you feel more laid back and chilled out and just jam to some 70s songs, like The Eagles or Lynyrd Skynyrd, or some more classic stuff, and sometimes I try to explore more the modern side of music, like Sleep Token, Spiritbox, all those bands. Also Ghostemane, even trap music as well. In Italy, we have a huge trap scene, so I listen also to that. I struggle a little bit with that, because sometimes the quality is not that great, or maybe the lyrics, don’t feel like they belong so much to me, but overall I like the new sounds. I like to keep it fresh because I think that the younger bands, although they might not have the same experience that we have or the same knowledge, on the other hand, they have a fresh approach that we can’t have. In the same way, we had a fresh approach towards the older bands of our time, and I think that approach you can only have because of the age because you’re approaching certain things for the first time, and so it’s important to keep that fresh energy also for us.
So, it’s important to listen to the new stuff and understand where music is going, and the developments, and there’s always something good to learn from everybody.
Awesome, and as a band, just for us to get to know you all a bit more personally, what are some of your hobbies or interests, what do you all get up to in your spare time?
Yeah, we are a pretty nerdy band. Cristina, for example, she’s into video games a lot, that’s one of her biggest passions. And Marco, our bass player, is into board games, like Dungeons and Dragons. Then our drummer is a big Pokemon guy. I am personally into comic books, horror movies, and horror-themed stuff, so we always go when we can to conventions, and comic cons. I also like European football, so I watch the games with my friends, do some wings, hang out with friends, and watch sports. I also go to the gym to try to get old with dignity and don’t become the ghost of myself and start to stay in shape a little bit. I like playing guitar, I like to play acoustic guitar at home.
We like all sorts of things, but we all grew up with horror movies, and video games, and comics, that has been a big. Also reading books, some more proper literature, and going to the movies.
We like to live and experience everything that can give us inspiration. It’s still very important for us to receive inputs, as when we were younger this was the same. I think one of the reasons why the band is still going in a good way, is because we still feel the same need to be fed with new stuff, with new inputs, with new discoveries, it’s very important to us.
I think it is important that you mentioned there about keeping yourselves inspired. So, how do you keep yourself inspired, or do you have a band/artist who is an inspiration?
When we started to choose a darker direction in metal, we were big fans of bands like Paradise Lost, Anathema, Type O Negative, Moonspell, Tiamat, and all those bands from the mid-90s, that were going towards that direction.
Obviously, we grew up like every other metal-heads and we like Metallica, Megadeth, Iron Maiden, Pantera, AC/DC, and all the classics, but we also look at more modern bands like Korn, Deftones, and Slipknot, we’ve always been very open and curious. We like Faith No More, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers as well!
Me and Marco, we were skateboarders when we were in our youth, so we listened to a lot of punk rock and hardcore music, like melodic hardcore, the Californian scene and British punk rock, like The Clash or Sex Pistols. So we’ve been very open to every kind of music, even electronic music, folk music, we’ve always been very open to anything that we liked, even reggae music, it doesn’t matter, we like it, and we try to get inspiration from everything. Even from something that is really far away from our cliché as a band.
Earlier we were talking about how the world is changing so fast and I agree that there’s so much crisis now, and one of the biggest crises I think that the world is experiencing is mental health, but I also believe that music speaks when words fail. Do you have a song that either you guys have written, or a song out there that has pushed you through a really difficult time?
We wrote a complete album about that, it’s called Delirium, it’s an album from around five/six years ago. The whole concept was generated by the fact that we experienced some mental health problems in members of our family who were getting old, suffering from dementia, and forgetting about their life.
We tried to analyze every part of mental health, and we imagined the album as a sort of a madhouse, or a sanatorium, where every room has a different patient with a different illness. We were analyzing all the different illnesses in each song, and all the artwork is us with the straight jackets taken in sort of a haunted hospital. We went to a real haunted abandoned mental hospital in Italy and took pictures there. We did a lot of research, because when you touch topics like this, you need to be very well informed, and don’t just do it as a generic, ‘Oh I look cool with a straight jacket’, it has to be, for us at least, to be studied a little bit. So, we went to do that, and we talked about our personal experiences with depression, or not feeling well, and we learned a lot.
A lot of people actually wrote to us about how much they connected with that topic, with that album, especially because of the words, and the music also, and the images, so it was definitely a very important topic.
It is probably one of the biggest because nowadays it seems most people don’t do anything anymore for people who havethis kind of struggle. There’s a lot of talk in the world about how we should connect, we should search for help, we should call this number, but in reality, the biggest help would be in the family, or would be in the people that you see every day, in the friendships. Somebody can help you from far away, but it needs to be that society that works together in that direction.
I think music is definitely one of the things that really help you because I know for a fact that all our fans always give so many different explanations about how much one song has helped them throughout their life in certain moments (even if the song had a different meaning for us when we wrote it), but for them, they get what they need from the song, and they take it and make their own to help them.
That’s the greatest and the most beautiful thing about music, is that everybody can just take it and use it the way they like. It doesn’t matter why I wrote the song, doesn’t matter how I got the inspiration, but the fact that you can just take it and use it, it’s the most beautiful thing I think, but I think the legacy of the music with the people, it’s what stands out.
It’s cool to make some money and to get some recognition, but the most important thing that is going to be left after we’re gone, is the legacy between the music and the people, that’s the most important.
Absolutely, it is beautiful, thank you. I have one more question for you and because it’s the last question, we like to make it very random, so Andrea, what is your favourite pizza topping?
Obviously, being Italian, obviously not pineapple!
Although I have to say, I tried the Hawaiian pizza in America, and it’s not bad…not my favourite as I wouldn’t order it, but I tried it and it wasn’t as terrible as it looked. I think it sounded worse than it actually tastes.
But my favourite topping, is probably a spicy salami we have in Italy, and that’s my favourite topping, but also even just a classic cheese pizza. I also like it a lot. It depends, because if you have good quality ingredients, you don’t need a lot of toppings, if the flavour of the ingredients is great, otherwise, put more toppings on.
Lacuna Coil will play seven UK dates this autumn including a stop at Glasgow’s SWG3 venue on Monday 21st October. Grab your tickets now and see you all there!