Lacuna Coil 'Comalies XX' Review

Beautiful withering

You don't really see full remakes in the music space, do you? Sensibilities can change in music like with film and games, but it feels like there's some implicit sanctity when it comes to old tracks. Sure we have the occasional remaster, or, following a significant lineup shift, a single or two injecting a crowning jewel with the new shine, but otherwise we largely keep things as they are. This makes Lacuna Coil's new ground-up re-viz project, Comalies XX, not only an intriguing novelty, but also a great illustration of the possibilities.

The biggest shift from the album 20 years ago to today's is definitely all tonal. 2002's Comalies exudes warmth, organic and almost groovy, even approachable - retroactively, it makes sense this is the release which pulled plenty of the uninitiated into metal in the first place. Such sentiments, including accessible sound, cannot be ascribed to XX, for better and worse. It's a much bleaker and harsher work, heavier not only in instrumentation, but also in dramatic weight. In the original "Unspoken" and the titular closing track, for example, front-woman Cristina Scabbia delivers the entire song with a steady and ethereal lilt, as if someone either trapped between our side and the other, or hoping to be. In XX, resident screecher Marco Ferro rages against Scabbia's croons, and, spurred by new pre-chorus buildups, the two-voice dichotomy instills new anger, but also anguish, desperation, and coercion. The original Comalies is a meditation, while XX is a maelstrom, flechettes of angst perhaps scraping away too much strangeness for some, but giving the material much greater thrust and direction ("Daylight Dancer" has been more than redeemed, it's reborn), as well as demonstrating the compositional evolution of Lacuna Coil as a unit. It's heartening to see a band of so many years being so playful with what many would consider their singularly most important release. If you're into the post-Delirium aggression the group has reified as their premier style, this album will feel some odd sense of legitimizing, but if you don't and chafe against the abrasion, the entire 2002 original comes packed as a second disc to let you time travel on a whim - truly, everybody wins.