Comalies XX

Comalies, the third album, released in 2002 with "Heaven's a Lie" on it, was the record that carried Lacuna Coil abroad. With its twentieth anniversary coming, the band ruled out a remaster or a new package and remade the songs instead. Cristina Scabbia has said the album is what let them make music for a living, and that the idea began with asking how the songs would sound if written in 2022; the pandemic had drained their creativity, and they wanted no music tied to it. Andrea Ferro has said the aim was to carry the songs into the sound of Delirium and Black Anima, with the current line-up. According to Ferro, much of the 2002 material was on analogue tape and some keyboard sounds had dated, so Marco Coti Zelati, the bassist and producer, first re-recorded the whole album as it stood to recover every part, the vocals were redone in their original form, and only then was everything rearranged. The new versions were recorded in March 2022 at Noise Factory Studio and BRX Studio in Milan and mixed by Marco Barusso, with Scabbia, Ferro and Coti Zelati joined by Diego Cavallotti on guitar and Richard Meiz on drums. The thirteen songs keep their 2002 order, each title gains "XX", and nothing was added or dropped; ten of the thirteen are shorter, and the album runs about four minutes shorter. Scabbia has said the songs kept their core yet felt as fresh as new writing, and that reworking songs people love was a real strain. Trilathera directed videos for "Tight Rope XX" in July and "Swamped XX" in September; the band had first played "Tight Rope XX" live on 15 July at the Inkcarceration Music & Tattoo Festival in Mansfield, Ohio. Century Media Records released Comalies XX on 14 October 2022, and the next night the band played Comalies in full at a one-off concert at Fabrique in Milan. The album reached No. 70 on Billboard's Top Album Sales and No. 10 on the UK Rock & Metal Albums Chart. In May 2023 the band released a 37-minute documentary on the anniversary.