February 16, 2012

Album Review: "Dark Adrenaline" by Lacuna Coil

With the rise of gothic rock and metal to worldwide popularity in the late '90s and early 2000s, many gothic metal bands began to receive heavy criticism for stylistic changes as their careers progressed. The two bands that received the brunt of such criticism were HIM and Lacuna Coil, for the supposed "American-ization" of their styles. While HIM defended their style changes to the critics, Lacuna Coil mostly ignored the criticism, barely even acknowledging their style changes in interviews or album previews. Such a strategy worked for 2006's Karmacode, an album that received largely positive reviews and generated many staples of Lacuna Coil's live set. But that strategy was less successful for 2009's Shallow Life, which got mixed reviews and received plenty of backlash from longtime fans. As such, the Italian group has lots of ground to make up for on their newest release, Dark Adrenaline.