A full house greeted Milan’s favourites for what was seen as an unveiling for their soon-to-be-released ‘Karmacode’ album. Openers Deathstars raced through a disappointing Rammstein-by-numbers support slot, although the doors opening late and a strict curfew meant that they had hardly warmed themselves up, let alone the Lacuna Coil faithful, before they were ushered off. Not a moment too soon, to be honest.

Kicking off with ‘Tightrope’, Lacuna Coil were in good form and seemed happy to be on stage; my last experience of the band was watching them seemingly going through the motions at the Metal Female Voices Festival in Belgium last October, so it was good to see them actually eager to please. Then straight into the new album with ’Karmacode’ opener ‘Fragile’ – good choice, a double-whammy to keep things interesting. Two more off ‘Comalies’ followed – ‘Self Deception’ and ‘Entwined’ – and I suddenly realised that with two vocalists in the band, four songs had passed and I hadn’t noticed anyone either than Cristina Scabbia and Andi Ferro; guitarists Maus and Chris Migliore, bassist Marco Coti Zelati and drummer Criz Mozzali were pretty much backing the two high energy singers.
 

I guess I’d expected a ‘greatest hits’ set interspersed with the new material. In fact, the sixteen-song set featured seven off 2002’s ‘Comalies’, eight newies and just one – ‘When A Dead Man Walks’ – from ‘Unleashed Memories’. So it was basically a ‘Comalies’ crowd-pleaser to offset the new material in case it didn’t work – although there was little chance of that. The faithful loved it and, to be fair, the ‘Karmacode’ material in general didn’t sound that far removed from ‘Comalies’, the exception being ‘Closer’ which seemed to stand out like a sore thumb. In an interview in ‘Rock-Sound.Net’ Cristina Scabbia had described it as resulting from "jamming in the practice room and [playing] something danceable for fun". On the night it sounded a bit of a cast-off, and I’m interested to see how it checks out on plastic especially as Jason Levine gave it full marks in his review (along with virtually very other track on the album!). On the night the best of the new bunch for me were ‘To The Edge’ and the Andi-led ‘Fragments Of Faith’.
 

The aforementioned ‘When A Dead Man Walks’ was a well-received nod to slightly earlier days, then it was more of the same ‘Comalies’/’Karmacode’ interplay to the final pairing of Depeche Mode cover ‘Enjoy The Silence’ (which live at least has been given a new kick-ass lease of life) and ‘Daylight Dancer’. Encores were first single off ‘Karmacode’ ‘Our Truth’ and the truly majestic ‘Heaven’s A Lie’. As an experiment, tonight worked – the new material came over well and the everyone went home happy; as a gig, it was great to see Lacuna Coil enjoying themselves and seemingly hungry for it again. America, here they come...

Setlist:

Tightrope
Fragile
Self Deception
Entwined
Devoted
To The Edge
Swamped
When a Dead Man Walks
Fragments Of Faith
Closer
Humane
The Game
Enjoy The Silence
Daylight Dancer

Encores:

Our Truth
Heaven’s A Lie