Review Summary: As if we needed another reason to say "Comalies" is a masterpiece.
Oh man, I wish I had even bothered to go into the bonus tracks of Guitar Hero III and played "Closer" before I even laid my hands on a copy. They made two amazing gothic and beautiful masterpieces before this and suddenly they sound like every nu-metal band out there.
I got into the Coil after a friend of mine showed me the track "Senzafine". I thought it was a beautiful track and being sung in Italian just made it even more gorgeous. I had to have a copy of this album. So she made copies of "In a Reverie" and "Comalies" for me and couldn't stopmlistening to them. Lacuna Coil were my new obsession for the time being and their music had me sold- beautiful gothic melodies, and a perfect chemistry between Andrea and Cristina.
A few months later I went and bought "Karmacode". Boy, what a surprise and not in a good way.
Seriously, every song on the album sounds the ***ing same. Why would they do this? By the time "Our Truth" was finished I wanted to vomit. This isn't Lacuna Coil. This is ***ing KORN with a chick singer. Same down tuned guitars, simplistic basslines, etc. If I knew most of the tracks would sound like "Our Truth", I'd have stayed far away. The amazing dreamscapes sometimes painted by the guitars on the first two albums were replaced by dirge-like nu-metal passages
In addition, Cristina sings way too low on this album. I know that when someone exhibits such vocal gymnastics like on the previous two albums, it is a no brainer to spend a bit more time in your lower register, but her beautiful vocals have been watered down, and there's too much Andrea Ferro here as well. He gets in the way sometimes and it's just excruciating to listen to. One particularly hilarious part is on "Fragments of Faith" when he randomly growls, "WHERE IS THE PAAAAAIN???? SOMEWHERE DOWWWWWWWWNNNNNN!!!!!!!"
The lyrics are excruciatingly terrible too, and appear to have been written by a six year old. I know the band are Italian but COME ON. Particularly from "Within Me": "There's something about you that makes me feel bad." REALLY?! Thankfully it gets much worse on from here and sometimes just freaking hilarious.
Oh, but there is one upside. I liked their cover of "Enjoy the Silence".
Sadly the band continued their downward spiral with "Shallow Life" and I haven't even bothered with "Dark Adrenaline" yet. If you want the real Coil, get the first two albums. Trust me on this one.
