LACUNA COIL's CRISTINA SCABBIA: 'It Was Really Stressful' Reworking 'Comalies' Songs For 20th Anniversary

This past October, Italian heavy rockers LACUNA COIL released "Comalies XX", a "deconstructed" and "transported" version of their third studio album "Comalies".

Back in 2002, LACUNA COIL released an LP which is now undeniably an anthem-laden millennial classic that established them as a band with the stamina to go the distance. Now, 20 years later, the current lineup of LACUNA COIL decided to revisit the songs, but not to just re-record them as they were but deconstruct and transport them into 2022.

When asked in a new interview with Australia's Heavy why LACUNA COIL decided to rework "Comalies", vocalist Cristina Scabbia said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "The main reason is that it is the twentieth anniversary of this record. And we didn't want to simply do a remaster or a repackaging, because it's a record that means a lot to is. It's a record that made us level up in the game, that allowed us to make music as a full-time job. And we love the songs. So we started to ask ourselves, how would it sound if we were to write it in 2022? And the idea just started to develop and get more and more interesting. [And we thought] why don't we do it for real? In a moment in which we were starting to write again, after the pandemic, because [the pandemic] got us really not creative on a certain level. We didn't want any music to be connected with the pandemic because it was a very negative period. So we started to work on the songs, and they were sounding really good, because, of course, they came from the old ones, from the core of the old songs, but they were sounding really fresh, like we were writing a new record. And it's so cool that now a lot of fans are confused because they don't know anymore if they love more the original versions or these versions, which is a good sign."

Added co-vocalist Andrea Ferro: "We didn't know what to expect from the fans. When you're gonna touch classic records, it's always hard because some people get really attached because it's the first time they discovered the band, the first time they fell in love with the music. So it's always a gamble a little bit, but we thought we could pull it off because we've done it in the past [where] we rearranged some songs just for the live shows, without maybe doing as much of the rework that we've done now, but still making new sounds so that it would flow better with the rest of the songs in the setlist. Some of the tracks, for the keyboards, we were using [keyboards] from 2002, so they don't sound as good as the new ones, obviously. So we kind of needed to rearrange them and re-record them. And a lot of this stuff was on tape, 'cause we recorded analog back then. So Marco [Coti Zelati], our bass player, which is the main songwriter of the band, he had to go back and re-record the whole album, the original version, to find out all the parts, and then we re-recorded the vocals in the original version, and then rearranged everything and see what we could get and where we could progress and make it different."

Continued Cristina: "It was actually really stressful. Because when you write a new record, people don't know the songs, so you put them out there. Some people might love them; some people might not like them; but it's something new. When you put out something made out of something in a new version, it's always very challenging. It was stressful. But we're happy — we're really happy."

LACUNA COIL celebrated the 20th anniversary of "Comalies" by performing it in its entirety at a one-night-only concert on October 15, 2022 at Fabrique in Milano.

"Comalies" was originally released on October 29, 2002 through Century Media Records. The LP, which featured the band's breakthrough single "Heaven's A Lie", has reportedly gone on to sell over 300,000 copies in the United States alone.

Regarding the "Comalies" title, Scabbia said: "[During the album's recording], we had a sort of creative explosion. We were working in a coma, sort of like in a different dimension. First of all we just wanted to use the word 'coma' but there was something missing so we played with the two words 'coma' and 'lies'."

The "Comalies" song "Swamped" was previously made available as a downloadable track for the music video game series "Rock Band" and also appeared in the 2004 video game "Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines".