Italian sextet Lacuna Coil occupy that odd little pocket of music, where classical orchestration meets heavy metal. Loosely defined as gothic metal, much of Lacuna Coil and their contemporaries Nightwish and Within Temptation’s DNA is the same as conventional metal bands. Their tracks are largely built round crunching guitar riffs and their lyrics steeped in gods, monsters and defiance. But Lacuna Coil also have a symphonic lavishness to their sound, driven by huge swirling melodies and the colossal power of singer Cristina Scabbia’s voice.
Their taste for the grander side of things extends to their live set, making their entrance to an enormous instrumental track with the O2’s barren stage turned into a derelict power station, flooded with a vast light show. Onstage the band are bullish, whipping up the packed-out venue throughout their set until they have what seems like every hand in the place with its second and fifth finger pointing to the ceiling, screaming for more. The scale of Lacuna Coil takes some getting used to, but it’s really difficult not to get swept along by their live set. The epic Heaven’s a Lie, swaggering Spellbound and their knock cover of Depeche Mode’s Enjoy the Silence are all totally captivating, and by the end of Our Truth, it’s impossible not to be full of admiration for the way they harness the force of a classical concert and turn it into a full-on rock show. Very impressive.
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