When Cristina Scabbia and Andrea Ferro first met in a metal dive called The Midnight, in their home city of Milan in the early 1990s, the prospect of forging a musical partnership that would take them all around the world for the next three decades was not even a fantasy.
“Italy doesn’t really have the history of rock’n’roll or metal roots or culture,” says Cristina more than 30 years on. “When we were sending our details to labels using a fax machine, we couldn’t even imagine getting signed.”
Back then, no Italian rock band had broken out on a global scale, but Lacuna Coil would change that, becoming international stars and Italy’s biggest-ever metal export in the process. Today their ongoing journey has brought them to Nottingham’s Rock City, where they’re playing later this evening. They’ve already been to look at the venue’s Lemmy memorial containing some of the late Motörhead frontman’s ashes, and the two co-vocalists are huddled against the English chill. Cristina is wrapped in a none-more-black shawl and chain-eats throat lozenges to protect her voice. Andrea leaves his overcoat on, but the pair are all smiles as they look back at their long journey to this point.
- “For one complete tour I had an FBI agent in every town”: Lacuna Coil’s Cristina Scabbia once had so many stalkers that the feds had to step in
- "I was emotionally moved watching Megan Thee Stallion interact with her fans." From surprise collabs with rap superstars to playing with Bring Me The Horizon and explosive new album Tsunami Sea, inside Spiritbox's incredible year
The roots of Lacuna Coil go back to 1993. Andrea was playing bass and singing in a band named Sleep Of Right with bassist Marco Coti Zelati, who would go on to become Lacuna’s bassist and chief composer. Cristina was dating Marco and would hang out with the band at rehearsals. She had sung before, without using her name or image, for DJ friends who were producing records. “We asked her to try something with us and we loved the result,” Andrea recalls.
Initially they were just thinking about using Cristina for backing vocals, but the dual approach worked so well that they decided to make it a feature of the band. “There were female vocalists of course, but we were leaning towards the doomy, gothic death metal mix and it sounded very different in that context,” he adds.
They took advantage of a local government offer giving young bands the opportunity to record for half-price at night, working from midnight until 7am. By day they plotted their rise from a makeshift band HQ located at the gothic clothing and shoe store Cristina was working in at the time. Century Media Records took a punt on the band – by this time renamed Lacuna Coil, meaning ‘empty spiral’ - and they headed out on their first ever tour, supporting Portuguese goth-metal mainstays Moonspell. It was an unmitigated disaster.
“Our guitarist was called for mandatory military service, and the friend we got in as a substitute got really sick with diarrhoea. He was getting really skinny and anxious and started freaking out,” Andrea recalls.
The hapless six-stringer dropped out, along with their drummer, but the core trio of Cristina, Andrea and Marco were determined to make the most of the opportunity. They grimly held on and finished the tour with the help of Moonspell’s drum tech and a guitar tech pretending to play the guitar parts, which were actually on tape. A post-tour shake-up saw them jettison the dead wood and recruit long-term replacements with the same level of commitment.
The band continued to plug away with steely determination, releasing their first two albums and gradually building a name for themselves on the European circuit. It was their third album, 2002’s Comalies, that would eventually provide their international breakthrough. Refining their developing sound into a fully realised package, it combined dark gothic atmosphere and melancholy themes with shimmering hooks and an aggressive metal crunch. The switches and interplay between Cristina’s crystalline vocals and Andrea’s more belligerent bark added to the shifting dynamics and sense of light and shade. It was a fantastic album, but, as Cristina points out, you also need a slice of luck.
That luck came when Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne’s son, Jack, brought Lacuna Coil to the attention of his parents, who promptly signed them up for the 2004 Ozzfest. The Italians quickly found themselves part of the chaos of this travelling festival.
“You only had 20 minutes to prove yourself and, apart from the headliners, the bands would rotate, so you might be playing at 9.30 in the morning or the best slot of the afternoon,” Cristina recalls. “Every day was different and all the bands would hang out and party. I was in catering one time and someone said, ‘Ozzy and Sharon would like to say hi.’ I was a little bit starstruck, but they signed this album for me that had all of the bands from the tour on it.”
Their appearance on the Ozzfest tour, combined with radio and MTV picking up on the single Heaven’s A Lie, meant the band’s US profile skyrocketed, and their burgeoning success had a knock-on effect back in Europe. They soon became Century Media’s biggest-selling act at the time, and the success of Comalies kicked off a whirlwind period for the band. They toured nearconstantly and 2006’s follow-up album, Karmacode, continued the success, adding a nu metal bite that alienated some existing fans but won them many more. The constant grind of those years did have some casualties, however, one of which was Cristina’s romantic relationship with Marco.
“When you tour together for such a long time, you get to the point that you really become like a brother and sister,” she says, when asked if dealing with the split caused any friction within the band. “And I really do love him as a brother. I’d kill for him! Maybe we had a few months of assessing things, but I don’t think we brought our problems into the band.”
Cristina would later start a relationship with Slipknot guitarist Jim Root. In metal terms it was an A-list celebrity match-up, but the couple kept things low key. “We were together for more than 13 years, but it’s our stuff,” she says. “There’s a line you shouldn’t cross, not only for respect of the other person, but also the fact that people don’t need to know. I think that many celebrity couples give away so much and then when something happens they’re asking for privacy. If you want privacy, you carve it for yourself from the very beginning. It’s something that we lived and it will stay there,” she adds, politely but firmly.
One thing that did cause a little friction within Lacuna Coil was the fact that much of the attention the band received focused on Cristina. “Not so much for me, but the guys in the band felt a little underappreciated,” Andrea nods.
“We had a talk about it, because the situation was getting out of hand,” Cristina continues. “We had pictures taken in which I was visible and they were in the very back. We didn’t want to be ‘Cristina and her band’. We were and have always been just a band.”
The singer does admit to enjoying the attention and photoshoots that came her way, however. “In the beginning I did feel a little bit full of myself. It went to my head for a while, because it was so peculiar and unexpected. I got over it pretty quickly, but being on the cover of a magazine is still pretty awesome.”
There was also the glut of ‘Hottest Chicks In Metal’-themed magazine issues that appeared in the 2000s and early 2010s, many of which featured Cristina… “I don’t see the negativity at all,” she counters. I know a lot of people are against this because they see it as sexism, but I thought it was just a way to say ‘beautiful’. I didn’t see it as something that objectified me.”
Not all of the trappings of fame were quite so welcome. Some fans were simply over-intense, like the guy who presented Cristina with his wedding ring. “That was to tell me he had ended a toxic relationship and to thank me for somehow saving him from something bad with my voice,” she says. “That was peculiar, but I did have actual stalkers that were potentially dangerous and would follow me around. I remember them sending me weird pictures of me covered in blood or sending me pictures of a foetus. I reported it, and for one complete tour I had an FBI agent in every town checking on me. It was not only disturbing, it was also boring for me because I had to be confined on a tour bus every day.”
Cristina says she was never a big drinker, but for the rest of the band, a bit of partying often served as a pressure valve. “There was some alcohol abuse here and there,” nods Andrea. “That was getting kind of heavy, because when you’re on the road for three months, you’re drinking for those three months. None of us was really an alcoholic and when you’re young it’s easier, but you do start to pay the price.”
“The worst I’ve seen them?” ponders Cristina. “We were out with Rob Zombie and had a party on our bus. Bullet For My Valentine were there and they were big partiers. We were sponsored by Jägermeister back then, and I saw six bottles go in 10 minutes. Even Bullet just left because there was moshing; there was blood on the on the walls of the tour bus the day after. It was insane, but I was sober because I wanted to film it all. I have some tapes, but those will die with me!”
Subsequent years would see a number of line-up changes, but that core trio of Cristina, Andrea and Marco has held firm. After three decades together, Cristina describes her bandmates as her second family.
“We can have discussions, party together, hate each other for a few minutes and love each other to pieces,” she says. “It’s a very stable relationship at the moment and we have the same goals and drives. We still have that itch of competition, but we’re in competition with ourselves to keep doing better. It’s so fresh that for us it’s like we started a couple of years ago.”
That continued drive now sees the band returning with their 10th studio album, Sleepless Empire. It’s not a concept album, but, like several of their works, it does have an overarching theme. “We’re the last generation to have lived through an entirely analogue world into a digital one, and we can testify to the change,” Andrea explains.
“…And we kind of feel that we are living in a time in which it feels weird to take a break. You have to be present all the time or you’ll just disappear,” Cristina continues. “It can be destructive and it’s a reflection on these things; how they impact our lives and how we can connect and disconnect from it all.”
The album is darkly cinematic, leaning towards the heavier end of Lacuna Coil’s spectrum. It features guest appearances from Ash Costello of New Years Day (on In The Mean Time) and Lamb Of God’s Randy Blythe (on Hosting The Shadow).
“Ash has such a specific voice. I wrote the part specially for her and she did a phenomenal job,” says Cristina. “Randy we’ve known for years. When he comes to Milano we go out for dinner, or just for a walk. He’s part of the extended family.”
Lacuna Coil’s extended family of fans, friends and musical peers now reaches right around the world, but at heart they’re still the little band from Milan made good. “We were the first ones from our country to do a lot of things in metal,” says Andrea. “It’s something we never thought was possible when we started, but it makes us proud and it makes us happy.”
“I was one of the very few females who started in the metal business at that time,” Cristina adds. “I hope I’m going to be doing it for a long time, but if I can pass the flame and inspire others to do their own thing with it, I couldn’t ask for much more."
Sleepless Empire is out now via Century Media. Lacuna Coil play Bloodstock in August and Aftershock in October, as well as headline dates across North America, Europe and the UK throughout the year. For the full list of shows, visit their official website.
