LACUNA COIL – Dark Adrenaline

The famed Italian rockers Lacuna Coil have released their sixth full-length album, Dark Adrenaline. Critics have always had a difficult time nailing down Lacuna Coil to a specific genre. They have been praised at times for possessing a unique sound with fantastic songwriting. While those accolades may have held true early on in their career, as the years progressed, their music has regressively been toned down. The band released their arguably weakest album in 2009 with Shallow Life. Unfortunately, Dark Adrenaline is a carbon copy of Shallow Life — devoid of the quality and compassion that made Lacuna Coil an accomplished band early in their career.

Lacuna Coil once again teamed up with Pop-rock producer David Gilmore, who is famous for creating the early sounds of Linkin Park. Gilmore seems to be attempting to repeat history with Lacuna Coil; trying to make them sound very much like old Linkin Park. This principle also holds true for co-lead vocalist Andrea Ferro, who has always lacked diversity, but between Dark Adrenaline and Shallow Life it’s very difficult to discern his vocals from that of Linkin Park’s Chester Bennington.

Even looking at Dark Adrenaline objectively without emphasizing comparison on their previous work — it still simply does not hold up. The songs on this album have little variety or apparent care. The compositions are very weak; the musicianship has no core strength and ultimately comes off as extremely unconvincing.

If there are any redeeming qualities to this album, there are exactly two tracks worth mentioning… perhaps the album’s only saving grace. The first being the song “End Of Time”, which is a simple, melancholy track and probably the most melodic of any track on this album. It does effectively showcase the passion within both vocalists, Christina Scabbia and Andrea Ferro — something so desperately needed on many of the other tracks. The other song that stands out, which isn’t even a Lacuna Coil composition, is the cover of R.E.M.’s “Losing My Religion”. This track invokes an intense amount of emotion from the vocalists, and enables the listener to actually become completely fascinated for about 4 minutes.

Needless to say, Dark Adrenaline is a letdown for both core Lacuna Coil fans and passive listeners. Despite their advertising, this band is not evolving. They are taking many steps backward, and even though they may continue to be a huge success worldwide because of their mainstream sound, diehard Metal fans will not be fooled by this one.