Lacuna Coil – Sleepless Empire Review

By Kenstrosity

Italian gothic metal/groove/hard rock outfit Lacuna Coil occupy a special place in my metallic upbringing. Comalies, the band’s third album—and their breakout release—was the very first CD I bought with my own money. It remains a staple in my rotation to this day, thanks to hypnotic blends of dour atmosphere and poppy hooks sharp enough to pierce the gray matter permanently. This disparate combination is what put Lacuna Coil on the map as a common gateway for new metal fans. It also serves as a nostalgic portal for established metalheads like myself, who to this day kneel in reverence at the altar of those groups who lowered us, ever so lovingly, into the hellish arms of the underground and the extreme.

Lacuna Coil’s history, unlike some other bands of significance, is fraught with inconsistency packaged into three distinct eras. The first, a moody, doom-laden run that introduced the group to the world, culminating in the legendary Comalies. With Karmacode, Lacuna Coil modernized their approach, pulling inspiration from trendy metal tropes of the mid-2000s mainstream and dispensed with their half-doom half-goth personality (check the Korn-y bass tone on Karmacode and the hard rock attitude of Dark Adrenaline). This persisted for the next eight years, all the way through the darker, but shaky misfire Broken Crown Halo. A resurgence and return to form shortly thereafter manifested Lacuna Coil’s current shape on Delirium. Fresh and energetic, Lacuna Coil’s latest sound maximized its impact with the awesome Black Anima, striking a compelling balance between the groove-laden swagger of their mid-period and the genuine gothic heft of their origins. Earnest beyond expectation, Black Anima set a new standard for Lacuna Coil and deeply informs their upcoming tenth1 record, Sleepless Empire.

Throughout all of this tumultuous history, the shining beacon leading the way to success was Cristina Scabbia and her venomous, unmistakable siren song. Hemorrhaging power and charisma, Scabbia elevates everything, and that remains true here. To listen to the anomalous “I Wish You Were Dead” threatens to derail the entire experience, as the song itself recalls the bulk of their largely unloved (outside of the mainstream) radio-rock mid-period—but Scabbia’s spine-twisting snarl inevitably twists my conflicted mind towards the positive. Elsewhere, stronger cuts “Oxygen,” “Scarecrow,” “Sleepless Empire,” and “Sleep Paralysis” more faithfully reproduce the fiery swing and sticky pull of Delirium’s and Black Anima’s material, once again showcasing Scabbia’s brilliant placement and diverse range. These cuts make great use of Andrea Ferro’s vicious screams, highly reminiscent of Lamb of God‘s Randy Blythe (who himself features on the decent, but not quite excellent, “Hosting the Shadow”), as well. In fact, Ferro—for perhaps the first time in the band’s history—acquits himself with aplomb on Sleepless Empire. By completely abandoning his much-maligned rough-hewn cleans in favor of an extra heavy dose of throat-shredding roars, Ferro finally answers a decades-long call for a necessary shift even die-hard Lacuna Coil fans demanded. To see it finally executed instills a blazing fire of vindication and a soothing wave of relief.

Meanwhile, longtime keyboardist Marco Coti Zelati takes over for Diego “DD” Cavallotti on guitars on top of his synth duties, resulting in a bit of a mixed bag on the instrumental front. “DD” earned his stripes by injecting Lacuna Coil’s Black Anima material with everything it needed to resonate with skeptics and fans alike, who both longed for more impactful guitar work from these Italians (see “Reckless,” “Veneficium,” and “Under the Surface”). Zelati does everything in his talented fingers to recreate the same results in his voice but falls short. Many of Sleepless Empire’s riffs and motifs lack punch (“In Nomine Patris”), engage in stale, chugging repetition (“The Siege,” “Sleepless Empire,” “Never Dawn”), or pull too heavily from Lacuna Coil’s past without doing enough to train them up for duty today (“Gravity,” “In the Mean Time”). Thankfully, the rhythm section makes up some of the slack, with former Genus Ordinis Dei drummer Richard Meiz taking the skins in his confident hands just as he did on Black Anima. As a final note, Sleepless Empire’s production is a notable step down. Inexplicably muddy and loud at the same time, it crushes everything to paper-thin flatness, save for the way-up-front vocals.

At the end of the day, I can’t say I’m disappointed with Sleepless Empire. There was little chance of it eclipsing Lacuna Coil’s landmark records. However, if my instincts are correct about how Lacuna Coil evolves—and I believe that they are—I suspect we’re simply witnessing the dying breaths of their current sound. Unfortunately, Sleepless Empire isn’t the explosive send-off it should’ve been to once more careen Lacuna Coil headfirst into new territory. Yet, I find myself charmed even still, such that I remain fascinated by what their future might hold.

Rating: Mixed
DR: 4 | Format Reviewed: 256 kb/s mp3
Label: Century Media Records
Websites: lacunacoil.it | facebook.com/lacunacoil
Releases Worldwide: February 14th, 2025

Show 1 footnote

1. Not counting 2022’s re-recording of Comalies, entitled Comalies XX

#25 #2025 #CenturyMediaRecords #Feb25 #GenusOrdinisDei #GothicMetal #GrooveMetal #HardRock #ItalianMetal #Korn #LacunaCoil #LambOfGod #Review #Reviews #SleeplessEmpire

Hesperia – Fra li Monti Sibillini Review

By El Cuervo

What could be better than beginning 2025 with black metal? I’ll tell you what could be better. Beginning 2025 with one-man-band black metal indulging in a level of excess that only an Italian taking 76 minutes over 14 tracks could. Seven prior full-length Hesperia releases have somehow flown under the Angry Metal Radar, so now I pay penance for our sin of ignorance. Fra li Monti Sibillini (Among the Sibillini Mountains) is a record centered around the nature and lore of a mountain range in central Italy. With such an overabundance of material on this record and across a discography that’s been largely ignored, this release should be terrible. But is it?

Hesperia brandish a type of black metal that’s fast, heavy, and vibrates with energy. The sharp, sawing riffs recall Immortal while their melodic knack recalls Moonsorrow. But the production has remarkable clarity and eschews the lo-fi aesthetic generally favored in black metal, enabling listeners to pick out all instruments in the mix. Because the guitars are distinct, their riffs and melodies are also distinct and represent some of the stand-out parts of Monti Sibillini. There are a load of highlights. The opening lead on “Il Regno de la Sibilla” has a beefy groove, while the closing lead on “La Fuga/La Salvezza” sounds like an icy howl. Likewise, the first riff on “Mons Daemoniacus: Nero Paese de la Scomunica” cuts like a curiously smart scythe and the passage from 2:15 on “l’Eretico, Il Necromante” swings heavily through a real headbanger. By contrast, the harsh vocals are the muddiest sound in the mix. This balances the clear guitars with something gravelly and wretched. It all fuses into some legitimately powerful black metal.

However, this is but one element of the Monti Sibillini sound and is arguably not the most important. Ambience, acoustic passages, and medieval interludes occupy more than half of the record’s run-time. The last of these blends pastoral soundscapes (animals, villagers, festivals) with folkloric instrumentation (strings, whistles, bells) to flesh out the story and themes. These ‘light’ strands aren’t particularly integrated with the ‘heavy’ strands. Transitions from black metal to folk, or vice versa, aren’t sophisticated and generally occur simply by stopping one and starting the other. Given the evident importance of the soundscapes and atmosphere generation to Hesperia, bridging the contrasting sounds more smoothly is an obvious point for future development. Monti Sibillini isn’t folk metal; it’s folk and metal. I further query the purpose of the four medieval interlude tracks when medieval interludes are built into the main songs anyway. They’re evocative but extraneous, adding ten minutes to an album that’s already over-long.

But the greater weakness on Monti Sibillini is how Hesperia are seemingly incapable of sticking to one idea. “l’Qrrivo a l’Hostaria” forms an early microcosm for the whole album. It doesn’t give you an opportunity to get your teeth into any of the incisive black metal or the moody synths or the medieval curiosities as the songs flips between each multiple times within its five-minute duration. The black metal teases something dark and aggressive but can’t build momentum because it constantly interrupts itself with intriguing but incessant atmospherics and soundscapes. “Il Regno de la Sibilla” is the first of a few long songs and despite its strong constituent elements, I can’t describe it as strong overall because it chops and changes so frequently. This is undoubtedly exacerbated by the blunt transitions documented above. Monti Sibillini makes for a frustrating experience as its music doesn’t feel as subtle or dynamic as it should be.

I sincerely struggled with scoring this review. There’s great quality in Monti Sibillini but it’s buried by annoyingly choppy songwriting. The constituent elements are persistently very good but it’s so fragmented that any enjoyment I glean is fundamentally undermined. It ultimately leaves me asking a question: why couldn’t have Hesperia trusted the listener to not become bored after more than 90 seconds of one sound? Why couldn’t the composite parts be fused together more neatly? Why couldn’t we have more of the black metal? If the band can create an album that doesn’t force me to ask these questions then we could have something great.

Rating: 2.5/5.0
DR: 7 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Hammerheart Records
Website: hesperia.bandcamp.com (managed by Hammerheart Records)
Releases worldwide: January 17th, 2024

#25 #2025 #AtmosphericBlackMetal #BlackMetal #FolkMetal #FraLiMontiSibillini #Hesperia #Immortal #ItalianMetal #Jan25 #Moonsorrow #Review #Reviews