Lacuna Coil interview with Andrea Ferro
Interview by Mike Ellis-PhotoGrafiti's International Rock Journalist
Photos by www.photografiti.net any reproduction by written consent.        
11/30/2006
La voche de bambino Andrea…  La voche de Cristina.  Check.  The last minute mic check for Lacuna Coil in Italian snapped me out of a trance while watching the packed Catalyst floor during the “ Blackest of the Black” tour stop last Thursday night.

 Danzig had cancelled and the word on the street was that his gear had been stolen from his tour bus, no, the whole bus was stolen, no; he was totally sick, etc. etc. (rumors?) …   Hey man, never miss a meeting because Belphagor, The Haunted, and Lacuna Coil completely rocked the place.  The show must go on.  That’s what rock and roll is all about.

  And what is it all about?  Belphagor happily pissed off the crowd with riotous lyrics and banter with the fans, The Haunted ignited the pit and rolled it into a frenzy, and then Lacuna Coil elevated the floor about ten feet with ethereal vocal harmonies, super tight Maserati guitars and growling Ducati bass and drums.

  Santa Cruz’s own, The Catalyst, hosting an international Heavy Metal fest with Lacuna Coil from Italy, The Haunted from Sweden, and Belphagor from Austria on a Thursday night….  I love it.  Over the ringing in my ears I thought I heard, “ Glen Whozig?”

Earlier that evening I was invited onto Lacuna Coil’s tour bus for an interview with Andrea “Andy” Ferro, male vocalist.

 Mike:  How is the tour going?

 Andy:  It’s going good.  The tour is over, I mean, this is the last show.   Danzig cancelled tonight so we are going to play a show.  We are not going to cancel because we are here, people are here, I mean not everybody will stay but some will and we don’t want to cancel for them.  Three of the bands are here and we are ready to play.

 Mike:  That’s great, that’s what rock and roll is all about.

 Andy:  Yea it’s good.  The tour has been short, only two weeks, and we go to Mexico tomorrow for a couple of headliner shows, then to the east coast for two weeks and then back home.

 Mike:  That leads me to my first question.  You have toured the world, what is the coolest club to play in the world and why?

 Andy:  Oh, there are many.  Recently we have played a lot in Europe because we had done a two-month headlining tour so I really like some of the clubs in Europe.  We’ve got a big one in Milan our hometown, which is called Alcatraz, and it has about a 3000-person capacity.  It’s very cool.  I like the Astoria in London; we’ve played there as well.  In America I like the House of Blues because they have a particular feeling…  not too big so we have good contact with the audience.  There are so many, I like the Nokia Theater in New York, my god there are so many.

Mike:  I read in the L.A. Times that you and Marco when you were 12 would ride skateboards all summer and “dabble” in hard rock in the winter…

 Andy:  Yeah, definitely, when we couldn’t skate because of the weather we would stay home and play cover songs and some ideas we had…

 Mike:  What did you guys listen to then and who were your influences?

 Andy:  We listened to metal… Metallica, Slayer, Iron Maiden, all the classic metal.  On the other hand we were listening to Black Flag, The Dead Kennedy’s and all the punk rock American hard core bands which have been a big influence for us to be very open minded and not be just into metal.  There was also Suicidal Tendencies and early hip-hop like The Beastie Boys & Run DMC.  But we’ve always been pretty open minded because of the background of skateboarding which is very open to a lot of new stuff.  We’ve also turned to more Goth music like Type O Negative, The Cure, and Paradise Lost.  That’s where we started with this band basically.

 Mike:  How did you guys come up with the name Lacuna Coil?

 Andy:  We had another name before, it was Ethereal, and when we did the demo tape it was under the name Ethereal.  But then we had to change it because there were two other bands using the same name.  To avoid copyright problems we just decided to change when we signed the deal with Century Media.  We changed it by putting together an Italian word and an English word so nobody else could have the same name.  The meaning is more or less similar to  Ethereal…  It’s like empty spiral if you translate it, and it still has an atmospherical meaning, which is more or less similar to Ethereal.

                                         Mike:  Songs like “Fragments of Faith” and “Closer” question everything, really, how does the male vs. female role impact the songs?

 Andy: We try to have a balance in the songs because we like to have both elements to make a more complete sound.

 Mike: Is the male voice a darker element in some of the songs?

 Andy: Not necessarily, I mean some songs can be the two voices together. Sometimes Christina can be more aggressive and I can be more melodic.  So we like to play with the voices to instrument the song. It doesn’t have to be like the Beauty and the Beast all the time, it can sometimes be different. It takes time to make it work very well because you need to learn how to work together. I think we have reached a good balance on this album but it can even be improved. I like to experiment to a different style with the voice, learn how to sing more clean, or do more melodic stuff.  You don’t have to go mono directional. I think it’s good to improve it and make it work as a big harmony.  It’s not only a contrast, there is a duality but it doesn’t have to be there all the time.

 Mike: I was looking at your album covers and I thought it was interesting because a lot of the press that you read describes you as ying and yang, male and female.  On one of your older albums covers “ In A Reverie”                    it                                                             looks like   Adam and Eve on the cover.

 Andy: Exactly, there was always this duality but that was never meant to be against, you know?  It was more to have the complete sound like in life…you don’t have only black and white, you don’t have only positive and negative.  Sometimes we are in between and sometimes we are the opposite.  The duality works for the music, it works as a unit, but it doesn’t have to be always “against” and yet sometimes it’s good to have a very brutal contrast.

 Mike: You have to know the evil to know the good, right?

 Andy: Yea.  It’s good to have both but just not all the time.

 Mike: I have a question from a friend’s Goddaughter from Dublin Ireland who is 14, she asks: Does Cristina feel like there is extra pressure in the industry as a female singer in a male dominated genre?

 Andy: I don’t think she has had problems with that because people have always been very kind with her.  You can have somebody that doesn’t think that women belong in hard rock or something like that but that’s just a minority of the people.  I think that is more a particular thing than a negative thing.  She is a very good singer, she’s a nice girl, and she has everything.  She’s not just the girl there with big boobs; she can prove that she can be a very good singer and an artist.

 Mike: I think that is one of the things that set you guys apart from everybody else.

 Andy: I think also a lot of women actually see her as a kind of roll model because she’s always using the sexy thing, but without getting too vulgar. You would never see pictures of her naked but she plays with her image for sure.  She’s more a normal beauty like the girl next door and that is why a lot of people really like her.

 Mike: How about Italy in the World cup?

 Andy: Ah, what about it!  I can show you one thing.  (Stands up and pulls out of his pocket a guitar pick painted with the Italian flag and 4 stars for each of Italy’s four World cup wins). 

This is our guitar pick with the Italian flag and four times world champion!

 Mike: Do you watch any American football?

 Andy: Yea, I watch American football, but I’m not an expert.  I think it’s a little slow, like they stop the game too many times.  They should keep going a little more that’s why I like basketball, it’s a little faster, but I do like it.  I’ve got the jerseys and everything like that.  It’s just that we grew up with soccer and soccer in Europe is such a big thing.  Everyone is very devoted, very crazy about it.

 Mike: This is going to turn into a sports talk show, but what did you think about that guy that head butted the other guy in the chest during the cup?

 Andy: Oh Zidan, yea, I think it was stupid because it was his last match.  Then he said goodbye to the career and it was stupid to leave that impression to the people.  He is a very good player and he should be remembered for how good he was when he played, not for the head butt.

Mike: I was noticing that there is a lot of emotion and soul searching in the writing and arrangements and that the guitars are juxtaposition as well as the vocals.  How do your arrangements come about?

 Andy: It was very complicated to mix this album.   We took a long time because we had so many elements.  We had a quartet, 2 violins, a cello and a viola.  It was very complicated to mix everything with the keyboard, with the two voices, with all the extra tracks for voice, all the guitar tracks.  So I think we might have over done it a little but you know?  Actually, we have a new edition of the album coming out next summer, which is going to be in 5.1 audio, and there you can really feel all of the arrangement.  I have one of one of the songs mixed in that way and you can really separate all of the instruments.  You’ve got all the arrangements from the classic music behind you; you’ve got the voice with front the secondary voices in the back, so you are really surrounded by the sound.  When we did presentation in Europe for the press we did it in a big studio where we were mixing the album and we built up a P.A. in 5.1, like a huge P.A., but in 5.1.  The journalists were sitting the middle of the room surrounded by the speakers and they were blown away by the sound.  The guy who mixed the album is a world expert of 5.1 audio.  So if you have 5.1, its like a dual disc, you’ve got a normal version with a lot of bonus tracks and some live tracks on one side and on the other side you’ve got the special 5.1.  It’s a completely different thing.  I never experienced it before this album and when I heard it was like wow, that’s amazing, a completely different way to listen to music.

 Mike: I need to get a new sound system!  So what else is in the mix for next year?

Andy:  We will be back in the end of January, 1/20/07 for a headliner tour in the states!!

Interview by Mike Ellis-PhotoGrafiti's International Rock Journalist