There is an awfully thin line between dependability and predictability; a line that can drop you into the camp of much-loved or much-derided, dependent on where that line falls. Consider the latest album from Italian metal outfit Lacuna Coil. If I was a betting man (which I’m not, but humour me) I would lay a not inconsiderable sum of money that you already know what Broken Crown Halo (Century Media) sounds like already don’t you? And you would be right and I would be rich.
Broken Crown Halo is the latest album from the Coil and it is another perfectly serviceable slug of pop music masquerading as heavy metal. This is their seventh (yes, that is not a typo) album and will please their fan base no end, guarantee them a booking at several festivals across the summer where people will look at one another and go “I quite like Lacuna Coil” without really being able to put their fingers on exactly why.
It is self-evident that Lacuna Coil has a recipe that they like sticking to. Opening track ‘Nothing Stands In Our Way’ has one of those big riffs and big choruses which will appeal to those who like a bit of fist pumping in their heavy metal. Not that there is anything that is wrong with fist pumping heavy metal (far from it), but here it feels ever so predictable and, worse, contrived. You know when the chorus is going to hit, when the solo will come in, when the key change will take hold. It’s much the same elsewhere on the record; Korn should phone their lawyers for copyright infringement on ‘Die and Rise’ and you know already without even needing to listen to it that ‘I Burn In You’ is one of those broken-hearted, pained rock songs that Lacuna Coil can knock out at will.
If all of this sounds like I’m winding up to launching into a crescendo of bile and vitriol then you’d be mistaken because the record sounds fine. No, really, it sounds fine. The problem I have with Broken Crown Halo, like much of their other work, is that Lacuna Coil usually have plenty of industry but not enough artistry to move them out of the second division. We have heard this all before – and we’ve heard it all before from Lacuna Coil. Broken Crown Halo is another record from Lacuna Coil, but I’m not sure that the world really needs one irrespective of how reasonably nice this one sounds.
6.0/10.0
MAT DAVIES