1. "Swamped" 

2. "Heaven's A Lie" 

3. "Daylight Dancer" 

4. "Humane" 

5. "Self Deception" 

6. "Aeon" 

7. "Tight Rope" 

8. "The Ghost Woman And The Hunter" 

9. "Unspoken" 

10. "Entwined" 

11. "The Prophet Said" 

12. "Angel's Punishment" 

13. "Comalies"

Cristina Scabbia: vocals
Andrea Ferro: vocals
Cristiano Migliore: guitar
Marco Biazzi: guitar
Marco Coti Zelati: Bass
Cristiano Mozzati: drums

 Salvo Russo  21/09/2002

And there is no lack of heaviness. Comalies music is a kind of iron- fist in a velvet glove. Comalies, on the whole, is a cool album that will mesmerize you and will put in a decadent but incredible smart world, where you can receive many impressions, being the pure dark feeling no longer the only horizon they explore. Listening to this album you will dive in a fantastic atmosphere with shadows but lights too. Obscure sensations embrace solar and ethereal flavours. In your mind cold pictures will appear  surrounded by oriental winds, green fields, Venetian minuets, ancient  plains, calm waves, nights enlighted by moonlights, spring sea sensations, metropolitan loneliness. The music is developing a lot of nuances, and, though in general supported by slow melancholic rhythms, heavy bursts of sharp rhytmic guitars whip in exact moments the general harmonic orchestral- like background, while a rather downtuned lead guitar spreads from time to time weeping and atmospheric chords. Anyway this is the new guitar trend in the gothic world: angry rhythmics that explode from time to time, and weeping lead guitars , distorted enough but not too invasive contribute to throw notes suspended in the air which arise half emotions, half doubts, half nostalgia. There is so much emotion inside Comalies which provide spectacular moments, catchy refrains, smart modulations, powered by agreeable percussion. Incredible sweetness alternates with gloomy attacks, while Cristina's voice, better than ever,  gives a tone of immense beauty. The only thing i don't like is the evolution of the voice of male partner Andrea Ferro, whose brilliant vocals are becoming too clean for my taste, and this change takes away from  the songs that sense of real anger and shouted pain which is to find only in the track Angel's Punishment , where finally Andrea is screaming again, accompanying an astonishing Cristina who can prove to be able to sing  bass tones too. 

All tracks are enjoyable and radiate (yes methinks radiate is the best term) mystic halos, weeping moments, truly metallic guitar riffing, atmospheric and vivid dreams. In the sphere of these general characteristics, i would put in foreground Swamped with its  oriental breeze, the fantastic Heaven's a Lie, with its gothic-venetian -like soundscape and its heavy guitars that bite you  while you are enjoying being transported by the waves of a decadent sea under a foggy sunlight . And again Daylight Dancer, an excellent track, driven by a gloomy but implacable powerful rhythm, where a feeling of desolation will run over you. Very beautiful is  the particularly sad and dark Humane with a an ethereal  gothic  outro, followed by the very good rhythmed and catchy Self Deception, supplied with good guitar riffs, which vanish into the following, solar Aeon with its guitar arpeggio which will let you fly  till the subsequent fantastic Tight Rope, where shoots of double buss drum united with gothic and oriental flavours power an intense melody that you will love. The Ghost woman and the hunter is more than sad and tormenting, supported by a magic Italian sense of the melody. Who is thinking that  Italians are a joyful people completely busy in eating pizza and spaghetti, doesn't surely know how deep and intense our nostalgia can be. Unspoken is driven by a good rhythm and is another song (together with Heaven's a Lie) where Cristina dominates . Distorted sounds open another sad and tormenting track:  Entwined, with its delicate and at the same time heavy desperation, underlined by  fantastic touches of guitars and drums immersed in a background à la Paradise Lost. Faster and catchy The Prophet said shows again the duet between Cristina and Andrea and good persisting guitars. Angry and aggressive are the male vocals in Angel's Punishment, tortured by the concept of war and destruction, with a subtle synthetic and alienating feeling. Let's dive again in pure melody and weeping waterfalls of sounds with Comalies where the 2 languages, Italian and English, merge wonderfully, where  Cristina and Andrea give us the last duet, and sad and magical notes seal, in an eternal vital nostalgia, an album of full class.

In conclusion, Lacuna Coil and their longtime producer Waldemar Sorychta have done  at Woodhouse Studios in Hagen (Germany) a simply cool work of intense creation,  good taste and high quality. And, though personally i go on preferring the more aggressive label mates and  fellow country band Evenfall, i am simply enraptured by this album. It's too magic,  one fears that it will disappear like our dreams do, so you begin to hear it from the first track, and again and again, in order to live those sensations again, in order to feel that these melodies are true, and are there for you. True like our tears and smiles...

rating   9.5/10

dalia di giacomo