LACUNA COIL's ANDREA FERRO: How I've Been Spending My Coronavirus Downtime

LACUNA COIL singer Andrea Ferro spoke to Metal Insider about how he has been spending his coronavirus downtime. He said: "I think I went through different phases. In the very beginning, we just came back from a South American tour and just literally we came home on a Friday, and by Monday the lockdown started — the softer one, let's say, with only some limitation for stores at certain times in the evening down to close. It wasn't mandatory to stay home, blah, blah, blah. But it was a little bit of that, so we started almost right away. The beginning was more about trying to understand what was going on all over the world and try to cancel or move all the flights already booked, all the shows already booked and talk to people around the world to see what they want to do. Because some countries were… Like, Italy has been hit pretty hard in the very beginning. And then some other countries were hit a little later. So, in the beginning, some people were kind of underestimating what was going to happen, and so they weren't sure if they wanted to cancel or not. But we were in full emergency so we couldn't leave the country, and the situation here was pretty bad in the beginning. And so it's been a struggle to move everything, to save the money we already spent on flights and try to get some vouchers, get the money back and then postpone the flights as much as possible. And then everybody started to do the same thing. Everybody started to drop from the festival bills and the festivals started to move the dates. And so the beginning was a big confusion, but also not knowing exactly how long it was going to be."

He continued: "Once I understood that wasn't finished anytime soon, I started to… In the beginning, I was just playing video games, just killing time and normal, we're watching TV shows and stuff like that. But then I started to do something more creative, I wanted to no longer waste the time and learn something. So I took my guitar, my acoustic guitar that I normally just play very rarely and started to play every day for five, six hours and got better and learned and improved. I also worked on whatever we could do for the band — obviously more talking to management and Zoom meetings, interviews, promoting, updating the fans of what was going on here. And that's it, basically, and let's try to stay busy, do a little bit of exercise because, obviously, you're home, you cook a lot and you eat a lot and then you need to burn something; otherwise you're going to struggle later.

"So slowly doing that, and then I think we started slowing to open a little bit and go out again," he added. "And now being able to go on vacation this summer, at least for a week, I've been to a lake not far from Milan, an hour away and then I'm traveling to the seaside, which is three hours away. So just try to stay close, not go too far and everything was pretty… people were behaving quite well and the distances were kept, so it was quite safe, I have to say. And I enjoy relaxing a little bit, even just a week, just to take my mind somewhere else."

On Friday (September 11),LACUNA COIL took part in "Black Anima: Live From The Apocalypse", an exclusive streaming show featuring a full performance of the band's latest album, "Black Anima", for the very first time, including songs never performed live, plus special backstage/off-camera moments and more. The Italian heavy rockers played the concert from the Alcatraz Club in Milan.

"Black Anima: Live From The Apocalypse" was hosted on A-Live.