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A few songs worth checking out, but nothing to really hold your interest.-
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| Lacuna Coil: Dark Adrenaline |
Alternative Rock, Gothic Rock
Century Media Records
January 23rd, 2012
- Trip the Darkness - 3:14
- Against You - 3:51
- Kill the Light - 3:35
- Give Me Something More - 3:56
,li>Upsidedown - 3:04
- End of Time - 3:53
- I Don't Believe in Tomorrow - 4:12
- Intoxicated - 3:48
- The Army Inside - 3:12
- Losing My Religion (R.E.M. cover) - 3:43
- Fire - 2:55
- My Spirit - 5:50
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| Review Information |
Release length: 45:09
Review posted on January 23rd, 2012
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| | Overall Score: 4.5/10 |
 
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| Discography |
Discography covers all information available up to day of review and is updated if future albums are reviewed. |
| Full-Length(s): |
In a Reverie (1999) • Unleashed Memories (2001) • Comalies (2002) • Karmacode (2006) • Shallow Life (2009) • Dark Adrenaline (2012)
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| EP(s): |
Lacuna Coil (1998) • Halflife (2000) • Sampler (2006) • Shallow Live: Acoustic at Criminal Records (2010)
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| Single(s): |
Heaven's a Lie (2002) • Lacuna Coil (2004) • Swamped (Promo) (2004) • Our Truth (2006) • Enjoy the Silence (2006) • Closer (2006)
Within Me (2007) • Spellbound (2009) • I Like It (2009) • I Won't Tell You (2009) • Trip the Darkness (2011)
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| Compilation(s): |
The EPs (2005) • Manifesto of Lacuna Coil (2009)
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| DVD(s): |
Visual Karma (Body, Mind and Soul) (2008)
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| Review |
Lacuna Coil is just another prime example of when good bands get a taste of fame and change to accommodate their newfound lust for it. Or are they? Since the band's first release, their Lacuna Coil EP back in 1998, everyone who heard it and the subsequent releases had an opinion about the band. The mixture of gothic tones to their edgier and more traditional Rock sounds helped to pave the way for many female fronted Gothic Rock / Metal bands today through the commercial success the group eventually found with their more modern offerings while on Century Media Records. Granted this act wasn't the first to do this, but it was the first to really be accepted on mainstream radio, and that's where the alterations began. The slow change led to the group basically abandoning much of what made them unique for a more traditional sound that has greatly been shunned upon by their initial fan base, as well as today's metal community. The group's fifth album, Shallow Life, and even their previous outing Karmacode have both been torn to shreds throughout the net, and it seems their sixth release, Dark Adrenaline, is prime for an unplanned makeover at the hands of anyone opposed to this new sound. But, does Dark Adrenaline really deserve it?
By now, whether you're a Lacuna Coil fan of the past, present, or not at all, you've probably heard the single from this album, "Trip the Darkness." Of course, this song has been ripped apart pretty bad by the masses, and for good reason. It shows the quickly becoming traditional clean high production quality that most top-notch Rock bands seem to have. The album is crisp with guitars leaning towards a cleaner sound, having only a slight distortion to give them a lighter edge suitable to mainstream radio airplay, a bass that makes very little impression on the album to really take note of outside the traditional slightly heavier bridges or more open sections that allow the bass to sneak in a little more. The drumming finds a decent lighter click to the kicks, a bit of a deeper sound to the snares that really hold little impact but still sound alright considering the tone of the music, and cymbals that fill the rest of the music out nicely without being too loud or low to be drowned out. And, of course, the vocals are pretty loud and clear with the clean singing from both male and female leads, but that goes without saying for anyone who heard the group lately.
One of the biggest letdowns here is the lack of atmosphere. Dark Adrenaline takes that crisp audio quality, and the band's performance to a level of dullness that is quickly lost after the release starts. "Trip the Darkness" at least does feature a deeper sound with the guitars and some effects that are pretty dominant whenever they show, giving it a slightly dark vibe against a brighter, cleaner sound that greatly conflicts with each other. The vocals here are not that impressive, but they are energetic and the chorus is catchy. But that's about all that could be said, and this one does come off as one of the more impressive cuts of the release. This carries over to "Against You," carrying a bit of a more upbeat approach to the verses, as well as a stronger, energetic vocal performance that puts "Trip the Darkness" to shame in some ways. The chorus sounds horrible vocally though, as you can pick up on pops in the vocals that sound horrible, usually in the first two lines, always in the same spot, and lead you to wonder how anyone could let one of the stronger offerings of the album go with such an obvious defect either in the performance or any altering that may have been done in the studio (it honestly sounds like copying and pasting done wrong but it may not be that.)
But with a pretty rocky start, it's when the band really does officially lose what little gothic tone they had left that they actually sound good. While not too generic at times, there are some good songs here that are well done and, despite being mild performances vocally, end up being catchy and soothing to the ears. "Give Me Something More" is a good example of it. The song doesn't really offer too much that fans of Alternative Rock aren't familiar with, but the music itself is catchy, has a nice bit of edge, the female vocals are soothing and the male leads accompany them nicely instead of in a traditional response like "Trip the Darkness" and "Against You," and ultimately makes for an enjoyable song that will find you bobbing your head along to. "Upsidedown" is actually pretty impressive as well. Vocally, it's different, and more aggressive, even in the music. The song has a heavier tone that brings it back to some better Gothic Rock sound, a much stronger female vocal performance in the chorus, and the harsher male vocals work perfectly against the darker track and it's rather infectious rhythm that can lead to the same end results of "Give Me Something More" if given the chance to sweep over you. But from here on out, it becomes rough waters.
Of course shedding themselves too much of anything special can, and definitely does, cause the listener to run into some bland moments. "End of Time" clearly tries to weave a more intimate setting through a traditional lighter tone and generic beyond belief Alternative Rock ballad concepts. Christina Scabbia ends up resorting to the most bland female vocals humanly possible, showing no luster at all in an attempt to some more emotionally restrained and soft-spoken, while Andrea Ferro handles his vocals with a little more energy since he comes in during the heavier moments. If you heard slower Alternative Rock track, you've heard this already, and can easily bypass this without missing a thing. The rest of the album basically comes to this, though some tracks are still enjoyable if you can look past the fact that there's really nothing special to them. "The Army Inside" is another stereotypical track that feels like it's meant to be an Alternative Rock call to arms, but it's more accessible sound is ok, as is the overly simple foundation. There are plenty of worse sounds out there that handle this, and Lacuna Coil does at least manage to bring in a richer sound that isn't to copy and paste from every other band out there. But with that example given, there's absolutely no reason for Lacuna Coil to bastard "Losing My Religion" by R.E.M. as bad as they do. The band tries to bring the song into the modern Alternative Rock era, and ends up removing the emotion in the song with generic music, synthesizers that have absolutely no place or relevance to the song, and in no way feels as dark or depressing as the original cut. Really, if you don't lose all hope for this band after that, there's something wrong with you.
Dark Adrenaline has it's moments, but once you hit "Losing My Religion," you'll probably lose all hope for Lacuna Coil. If you can dull your senses down enough, "Trip the Darkness" is a decent, catchy listen, and some of the other earlier tracks do still show some unique potential for the group, even when the band isn't too different at all from their newly found Alternative Rock brothers and sisters. Is it generic? Yes. Is it well done? For the most part. It's nothing really more than what you would find on your local mainstream modern Rock station, and some tracks do sound richer than others, and showcase a little more talent than say Puddle of Mudd or Nickelback. This isn't a release that will make an extreme impact obviously, but there are some songs you can just throw on a compilation or your MP3 player and just have it on in the background or while you're in your car, even if you don't really like their new sound. Lacuna Coil seems to be trapped in limbo though. At times it sounds as if they are progressing, sometimes going back to their roots a touch, and other times just filling the album up with the same repetitive dueling vocals and generic Alternative Rock chords. It's not really worth your time since it's largely generic material with cuts even more stereotypical than that, but if you do have a little time to spare, it's worth sampling for the better songs outlined earlier.
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Digital review copy of this release provided by:
Century Media Records. |
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