Location: Pordenone / Palatenda centro sportivo Armando Lupieri / Italy
Date: 26.11.2016
Lacuna Coil, the long-lived Italian gothic metal stronghold from Milan, dropped their eighth studio album “Delirium” at the end of this May, and these days, as part of their new tour, they’ve been hanging out right next to Slovenia’s western border. In Pordenone, with a revamped lineup armed with two new members, guitarist Diego Cavallotti and drummer Ryan Blake Folden, on a massive autumn-winter European tour, they finally set foot on Italian soil, which is to say their home turf, for the first time.
This show was originally announced for Il Deposito Giordani, but the place had to shut its doors over complaints from the neighbors, who said the late-night “racket” so close to their homes was bothering them. An excellent venue where we enjoyed plenty of gigs, including W.A.S.P., DTA Death to All Tours, Soulfly and The Aristocrats, it got “sealed” and slapped with a ban on operating.
So the gig was moved as an emergency measure to Pordenone’s sports park, which also houses the stadium of the Villanova football club. That’s the southwestern part of Pordenone, called Villanova. The band played in a sports (multipurpose) hall that, judging by its tent roof, reminded us of the former Teatro Tenda (now, after its renovation, Gran Teatro Geox) in Padua. So, no mistake. Standing outside during this show, you could hear a lot more noise echoing through the streets than ever when bands played at Il Deposito Giordani.
Anyway, the local promoter saved a gig that nearly fell through with sheer heart and stubbornness. And that’s what matters. Although the RockLine crew, because of urgent obligations that wouldn’t let us “peel away” from Ljubljana before a quarter to eight in the evening, had to skip both support acts entirely this time, they deserve at least a quick mention in this report. At half past eight, GOD (Genus Ordinis Dei) kicked off the warm-up. The “almighty” quartet from the Italian city of Crema presented their studio debut “Great Olden Dynasty”, released this year. They were followed by Denmark’s Forever Still, who took the stage at a quarter past nine and presented their studio debut “Tied Down”, released this October. The quartet, led by the charismatic young Maja Shining, got a half-hour slot for their set, just like their predecessors GOD.
RockLine actually got to the venue right before Lacuna Coil hit the stage! At ten in the evening, give or take a minute, the lights went down, the stage was swallowed by fog, and the instrumental half of the quintet appeared on stage, set up behind an improvised backdrop of “asylum security fences”. The scenery and costumes of the band’s theatrical show on this tour were thus entirely devoted to dark, delirious tales from the madhouse, which the new album’s very title already hints at. A taped intro with Ultima Ratio, roughly “final judgment” in translation, right before you snap and get zipped into a straitjacket, and then the band explodes on stage with Spellbound, where the charismatic Christina Scabbia and vocalist Andrea Ferro finally jump on stage. The band kept changing outfits throughout the show, and for the most part Lacuna Coil gave off the feel of lunatics in straitjackets, with bassist Marco Coti Zelati “Maki” and drummer Ryan Blake Folden treating themselves to face paint bordering on black metal “corpse paint”.
There’s no point wasting many words on the performance itself. In one word: strictly professional. Sound-wise and in delivery. Tip top. Everything under control and in the glow of outstanding live form. You can tell the band has racked up a heap of shows on the current tour, and that mileage, routine and experience simply count. The band is held up by the charismatic stage presence of the incredible Christina Scabbia, who once again cast a spell over the not exactly packed venue, not only with her outstanding vocals, which effortlessly and with unbelievable power conquered absolutely everything, even the highest, almost mezzo-soprano ranges, but also with a superb feel for talking to the crowd. The passionate and unbelievably devoted singer pulled the audience in especially slyly, with theatrical addresses like: “Finally. After two months, we’re playing at home for the first time and I can talk to you entirely in our language!” and then “These days there’s a pile of concerts happening every single day! We really appreciate that you took the time and came to our show tonight, because there’s really a lot to choose from and sometimes it’s hard to decide which concert to prioritize.” (and so on). The crowd was literally eating out of her hand. Of course, the front rows were taken by an especially fanatical bunch of fired-up Italian fans of the band, who knew all of the lyrics by heart.
The band thus kept developing its symphonic, melancholic, dark gothic metal character, laced with spices of industrial as well as modern “breakdown” inserts, as expected. Seriously professional. Played and sung at a top level. Flawless. Precise. But backed up by taped extras (keyboards, programmed loops). More than half of the entire repertoire was devoted to songs from the last two albums, and Lacuna Coil played as many as seven tracks from the current “Delirium”!
If not before, Lacuna Coil got the whole hall on its feet with their take on the Depeche Mode original, the “globally adopted by everyone” Enjoy the Silence, which of course everybody knows by heart, while the regular set closed with Nothing Stands in Our Way (“Broken Crown Halo”, 2014). The mandatory encore unfolded the same way. With newer material, and before Delirium the crowd pulled A4 sheets out of their pockets with the song title written on them, which fueled the theater of the stage action even more.
An hour and fifteen minutes. Seventy-five minutes, that is, which flew by in a flash. The crowd got exactly what it came for. A show that mixes in just the right doses high melodicism, the right measure of mournful gothic “fatal attraction”, a pinch of delirious “horror”, and that thing that especially gets our western neighbors going. A solid chunk of stage glitz and kitsch. A show and theater that demonstrates Lacuna Coil’s incredible sovereignty and self-confidence. After this gig the band headed south, to Rome, over 600km away, and then via Milan went back for a fourth Italian show in Bologna. Lacuna Coil arrived in Pordenone straight from Barcelona in Spain. Legs of the tour that connect to one another in no rational way at all, and which, thanks to such planning, can end up wearing the band out. But Lacuna Coil radiated enthusiasm non-stop in Pordenone, not only because their tour is finally tipping into its closing stretch, but also out of the huge relief of finally being on home soil.
author: Aleš Podbrežnik
photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Setlist:
1. Ultima Ratio
2. Spellbound
3. Die & Rise
4. Heaven’s a Lie
5. Blood, Tears, Dust
6. Ghost in the Mist
7. The Ghost Woman and the Hunter
8. Trip the Darkness
9. Downfall
10. You Love Me ’Cause I Hate You
11. Our Truth
12. Enjoy the Silence
13. Nothing Stands in Our Way
—encore—
14. Delirium
15. Zombies
16. The House of Shame
