Our second interview with Andrea Ferro of Lacuna Coil
Photo by Clay McBride
When we launched this site nearly one year ago, Lacuna Coil was one of the first bands to step up to be a part of it. They are not only a great band, but they love their fans and enjoy giving back to them. In the time since our first interview, the bands latest album Karmacode has sold a ton of copies and the band has toured their asses off in order to get the word out about it. I caught up with the band again during the Jagermeister tour to catch up on things. Due to a scheduling problem with the venue (not her fault and entirely our of her control), co-lead vocalist Cristina Scabbia had to leave the venue so our friend (and other co-lead vocalist of LC) Andrea Ferro took the time to speak with us after meeting with some fans. This is what went down...
Anarchy Music: You know, most bands as they get more popular tend to shy away from their fans, the more popular you get, the more you seem to embrace them. How do you manage that and why is it so important to you?
Andrea Ferro: Yeah, it’s good to keep your feet on reality. You don’t have to think like if you achieve a little bit then you are now a complete different person or complete different entity. We’re still the same people we were before. Of course, sometimes it’s not possible because there’s just too many people. Like, we are doing a signing every night of the Jager tour and it’s a lot of new people coming to us because there’s all those people from Stone Sour coming to us and we mesh pretty well so we have a lot of new people. It’s impossible for example to take pictures with everybody because the line is too long and it becomes longer with the pictures. It’s not that we don’t want to be touched it’s just that the line is too long and it makes the signing last two hours instead of one.
Anarchy: You’d have people missing Stone Sour’s set as well, and that’s not cool.
Andrea: Yeah, exactly. So sometimes it’s possible to hang out , to stay with people, but sometimes not. That doesn’t depend on our wanting to meet the people or not, it just depends on the situation. When it’s possible it’s nice. We like to keep contact with the fan base. The fan base will always be there for you so you have to take care of them. Those are the guys that brings you somewhere, that brings the name of the band to more exposure.
Anarchy: Just between us, I see a lot of Lacuna Coil t-shirts today…
Andrea: Every night we have a lot! Merchandise sales on this tour are amazing and every show we have a very good reception. Also, a lot of new people are coming to us. All the mainstream people who only listen maybe to the Stone Sour single on the rock radio station, then they discover our band here. It’s good.
Anarchy: Every time I see anything about you guys, it’s followed by you saying how proud you are to be from Italy. I find that to be really cool because a lot of foreign bands don’t really talk about their homelands for one reason or another. After a year of touring, do you get treated like a superhero when you get back home?
Andrea: Not like superheroes but for sure, the fact that we’ve had some success over here helped our popularity back home. So now a lot of people are looking at us as the biggest Italian export product or something like that (laughs). We gather more attention because we’ve had success over here. It changed for sure the perspective of the band. We get more credibility because we have made some kind of success here in the states. It helps the popularity also back there.
Anarchy: Your bio states that you got the name Lacuna Coil because the words translate to “empty spiral” and that reflects your view on life. That’s kind of all it says on that. How does an empty spiral in your mind reflect life? Could you expand on that?
Andrea: Yeah, in the beginning when we did the promo tape we were called Ethereal, which means something that you can’t touch, that is not concrete but is in the air. It’s atmospherical. So, since we were playing a more atmospherical kind of metal that name was perfect for us at the time. We had to change it because when we signed a deal there was there were like two other bands that was using the same word in the band names. It was pointless to start with a name that was unoriginal and taken by other bands so we decided to create our own name and we put together this Italian word with the English word coil, so it had a personal meaning. The translation is empty spiral, which is more or less the same as ethereal. It’s the way we live as a band. We are mixing the more atmospherical parts with the metal side of our music. That’s what we mean when we say it’s our lifestyle. It’s the way we approach the music especially. Of course, in life it’s a little bit harder to translate, but I think we have this point of view which is a bit spiritual but it’s not religious. It’ not connected to any Christianity or Satanism or whatever. We are more open to spirituality and inner search of spirituality in our lives.
Anarchy: That’s something that I think appeals to a lot of people. I certainly get that through your music is that it’s not religious but it does have an odd spiritual aspect to it. You feel as if it opens you up to whatever’s going to come in.
Andrea: Exactly, and our spirituality is not always positive, because you can’t be happy all the time. When we write a song sometimes it’s very sad or depressive kind of song. Sometimes it’s more happy and energetic. So we want to face all the different aspects of life and spirituality. It’s not that your spirituality can always be super positive and good. You try to make it like that but it’s not always possible. Sometimes you are negative and you hate and you have bad feelings sometimes.
Anarchy: What’s the new single “Within Me” about?
Andrea: “Within Me” was a song that we wrote for a friend that basically, it was not suicide, but basically he let himself go by using drugs a lot. He passed away 3 or 4 years ago now. The fact that we couldn’t do anything. It was not suicide but it was just abusing so he let himself go in a way that we couldn’t do anything to help him out. He was in New York and we in Italy so it was tough to stay with him. We were on tour, we had other things to do. So, the idea was that sometimes you want to be there for your friends but you can’t be there. That time we were not there we lost him. It was the first time that happened to us as a band, that you know somebody and work with him and he died like that, in a stupid way. So we learned to be stronger people with that. We learned to deal with situation that you can’t always have control of.
Anarchy: I think it’s my favorite song off the record.
Andrea: Yeah, it’s a good song, I like it.
Anarchy: It’s a beautiful video too. That must have been fun to do.
Andrea: Yeah, we did it right before this tour actually. We did it in Italy. It’s partly in an island called Sardinia, the part that looks like a dessert where Cristina has a special effect. The other part is in a castle in Turin, like one hour from Milan.
Anarchy: Oh, that’s not your house?
Andrea: No. (laughs) It’s a bit too expensive. It was cool. We did it with an American director which actually moved to Italy like 7 years ago. The guy also works special effects for Industrial Light And Magic for special effects in Star Wars. So, he was an experienced guy who had also done some videos for Italian artists as well. We wanted to try something different and we were at home so we figured we’d shoot it in Italy since we were there and it’s going to look different than the usual American video in this big city and stuff that we already had done. So we said why not/
Anarchy: Are you ready for a question you’ve never heard before?
Andrea: (laughs)
Anarchy: NEVER! EVER!
What do the numbers on the Karmacode album cover mean? You’re dying to tell me! I know you are!
Andrea: Yeah, we can’t tell that, it’s a secret!
Anarchy: I know, I know! People have been trying to pry that out of you for a while.
Andrea: We did a contest also on our fan website where they have to guess what the numbers mean and we gave an award to the nicest explanation. It was not the real one of course. (laughs) It’s part of the mystique, it’s the spiritual part.
Anarchy: Okay, then without revealing what it is, do you have a belief in numerology, or anything like that?
Andrea: No. In Italy there is a big culture about lotto. It’s where you gamble on numbers.
Anarchy: Yeah, we have that here as well.
Andrea: It’s a big tradition in Italy. You dream something and turn it into numbers and you play those numbers that you dreamed about. So, it’s a big story of numerology in Italy but that is not connected strictly to that. Even if we always give particular attention to numbers, that’s in the culture of the country. The date you were born or the date you get married or even met your girlfriend, it’s very celebrated. It’s very important.
Anarchy: That’s the code part, what about karma? Do you believe in that?
Andrea: Yeah. I’m not saying that what your read in the book is exactly what’s going on in life but I think that if you act positive with people you will probably have something positive back sooner or later. If you act negative, you try to fuck somebody else in a bad way, I think that is coming back to you in your life. That’s my opinion. I believe in energy, and energy can be positive or negative. If you have a lot of negative energy then you‘re only going to get negative energy back. .I think it’s true. In that way I believe in karma.
Anarchy: Well, you guys definitely put out positive energy. The time we hung out before I tell people to this day that you’re one of the few bands that don’t seem to realize that they’re rock stars. You seem to be just regular people that are doing your job and your job happens to be entertaining millions of people.
Andrea: Yeah, it is. Maybe because we’re from Italy and we don’t have stories about rock stars, about bands touring and this kind of success, so maybe we’re more naïve in regards of our success compared to other bands which are more used to the environment of the music business, of the rock star lifestyle. For us, everything is like a great experience. It’s always like ‘wow, we’ve got a limousine , wow we got to meet Alice Cooper!”.
Anarchy: Alice Cooper huh?
Andrea: Yeah, we met him in Phoenix. We were playing a show and he was watching from the side of the stage. Then we met him after the show. We’ve met Ozzy, we’ve met a lot of famous people that we never thought would be possible to meet just because of your job.
Anarchy: What’s the coolest thing so far?
Andrea: The coolest thing I think is the way we’ve been able to bring the level of the band. When we started the band back in Milan in 1996 we never thought it would be possible that we would actually tour America or actually sell some records or make it to the Billboard. We never thought it was possible. We just had a dream to sign a little deal and distribute our records somewhere, maybe do a European tour. That was already a big goal for us so whatever we have achieved so far, it’s always a surprise. It’s always something “wow, we are really doing this“. We are really doing so many tours in the states with so many good bands and it’s already a big satisfaction. We never expected it to happen.
Anarchy: On this tour you’re doing some in store acoustic sets…
Andrea: Yeah, it’s a special thing organized by Ovation guitars. We do in music stores a little mini concert, like 3 or 4 acoustic songs. Then we do a question and answer with the fans and a little bit of signing. It’s cool because it’s almost therapeutic because you go there and see all these young kids who are in the music school of the store and they want to learn. They are very curious. Like, the last day we did a signing in a guitar store that they have a lot of teaching going on. There was this band of probably 8 years old guys. They had a band already. That’s more about the music how it is in life, instead of a regular concert where you go to see the big show. It is more intimate and is more about telling what music is really about to people. It’s a great experience.
Anarchy: Your music even though it’s very ethereal, it still has an earthy texture, so I think it lends itself well to the acoustic style. Do you see doing an acoustic EP or something in the future>
Andrea: It’s possible. We never really sit down and write specific songs in acoustic. Instead we always adapt a song we already had in an electric version into the acoustic. I think that one day with a little more time and after we ar maybe out of the big promotion cycle of the album. Now it’s a lot of promotion every day. It has to be a moment where were more quiet, maybe in a few years. Why not? We’d love to. We’d love to also do a proper tour in small theaters only acoustic maybe with a drum kit and violins and stuff like that. Real acoustic stuff.
Anarchy: That would be great. Your stuff is so moody…
Andrea: I think we will do it. I would love to do something like we get dressed up, something special, really special. Keep it in small places with nice acoustics. Just us and maybe a 4 piece, with a cello, a big bass and a coupe of violins. We have some friends in Italy who helped us record the album with real strings who work for the orchestra at La Scala in Milan. They’re young guys, they also like metal music. They might come with us for that but I don’t know when. We need time. Right now we are focusing on this album and probably we’re going to start writing for the next one.
Anarchy: You said the last time that we spoke that when it came time to write Karmacode that you were inspired by some of the recent US stuff, especially with the bass sounds…
Andrea: Yeah, the American Metal in general for the sounds because I would say it’s Rock, not only Metal. Metal you maybe only mean Lamb Of God or something like that. I’m talking more mainstream sounds like bands with big production like Korn for example.
Anarchy: Is that continuing? Are you hearing new bands now and thinking “yeah, maybe we can incorporate that into our sound”?
Andrea: Yeah. It’s not easy because a lot of the bands they tend to sound the same as every other. Like, a band will make it then every other band will come with the same sound and almost the same name. It’s difficult to really want to sound like that because we already have our sound so we don’t want to change completely to sound like everyone else. We want to try to keep a little bit of influence of different stuff but not overdo it.
Anarchy: Like after My Chemical Romance got big, every band starts with the word “My” so they’ll be near them in cd stores.
Andrea: Exactly. That’s stupid. That’s not the way to make it. You may have some little success for one but then you’re gone.
Anarchy: Lacuna Coil has changed their sound on pretty much every cd, so your fans are used to be a part of an evolution, right?
Andrea: Yeah, and I hope it’s going to be like that. That’s what keeps us alive is the evolution. That keeps us wanting to go on tour because we can play the new songs and new sounds.
Anarchy: Everybody is excited because after this you’re doing a headlining tour called The Hottest Chicks In Metal tour with a bunch of bands with hot chicks in them. I’m assuming that was your idea?
Andrea: (laughs) No, that’s a good idea, but it’s not coming from us. It’s coming because Revolver has an article every year now and they put Cristina on the cover and they did a special on all the bands that includes at least a girl in the band. It turned out to be a successful issue so this year they did it again and the issue will be Cristina again on the cover with someone else. They wanted to put it as a tour and since we had to do our own headliner run for the first time we decided why don’t we bring some bands from Europe that can be more interesting and do a different package from any other package that is on the road right now. To make it ore interesting we are going to keep it to small venues, try to sell them out, try to show the people that there is also this side of metal and make it as a special event, intimate and with different bands, a combination of something that makes it unique.
Anarchy: That also means a longer set from you guys since you’re headlining!
Andrea: Oh yeah!
Anarchy: What will you be playing?
Andrea: We have put a pool out on the fan club and on the Myspace for the fans to vote on the old songs. We have picked out 2 or 3 songs from every release and they can vote for the songs they prefer. The songs we can actually play live, because some songs we don’t have the trucks for the violins because they are too old and we didn’t put it on digital at the time because it was all analog. Or we don’t rehearse some songs for 9 years and we don’t have time. So, we tried to put out a list of songs we can actually play and we have keyboards. So, for sure the set list is not decided yet. They can vote until the 20th of April so until that time we won’t know exactly what we will do. Of course there are some songs we will play for sure, like “Heaven’s A Lie” “Swamped” the new stuff like “Enjoy The Silence” Besides the singles all the odl stuff is going to be picked out by the fans. Also from show to show we’re going to try to change it to make it even more interesting.
Anarchy: You have played so many live shows and so much of your success has come from your live performance. When are you going to release a live DVD?
Andrea: We were thinking about it for this year because it’s almost the 10th year anniversary. Probably during the year we’ll doa special show but we’re still thinking about where to record it, whether it’s going to be in Italy or Europe or in the states. We have to decide the location and find a special place. I would love to do it in a coliseum, kind of ancient Italian place. On the hand, in Italy you have to speak Italian to people so maybe we’ll do it some place where you can speak English and everybody understands. It’s in the talk for sure.
Anarchy: I’ve had a lot of people ask me why you don’t do an entire record in Italian…
Andrea: Because in the end of the day we also have to take care of the business side of things which include having singles on the radio and tv in the states. For here, to do a song in Italian for a single would not be a good idea for a single in America and the UK and all those places where they don’t speak Italian. It can work for Italy of course, but not for the rest of the world, we might do a double version. (laughs0.
Anarchy: You do a lot of special releases in Italy. The “Within Me” single has an Italian exclusive, right?
Andrea: Yes, because it’s the place where we still sell a lot of singles. In America there is no market for the single. You do singles for internet, for radio, for tv but not for actually selling the actual cd. In Italy you still can sell a good quantity of cds and going on promotion for radio for cd, it’s a little more like it sued to be. It makes sense to release it in Italy but not the rest of the world.
Anarchy: Since this is the 10th anniversary do you have a big birthday party planned?
Andrea: Were thinking about it. I think the best thing would be to do the live DVD and maybe a special acoustic thing inside the set or on secondary dates. We have to think about it.
Anarchy: If you’re going to have a party, you might as well get Jager to sponsor it. I hear it’s a big hit at parties!
Andrea: Jager, so far they endorse us here, the UK and Germany, but the rest of Europe works differently. They have an importer that is not working with rock bands the way they do here. They are trying to change this so if they also do this in Italy they might sponsor us.
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We are honored to have Lacuna Coil on the site again, and hope that eevryone will suppot this band! Go to Lacuna Coil on Myspace and Lacunacoil.it for more info. Oh, and BUY KARMACODE!