Delirium

Guitarist Cristiano Migliore and drummer Cristiano Mozzati left in 2014, and Delirium was the first Lacuna Coil album with Ryan Blake Folden, an American who had toured with the band since 2012. Recording began at BRX Studio in Milan in December 2015 and ran into February 2016; guitarist Marco Biazzi left in January, so four musicians finished the album. Bassist and principal songwriter Marco Coti Zelati produced it, the band's first self-production, with Marco Barusso engineering, and also made the artwork from a photo session by Alessandro Olgiati. The title came while the band were writing the song "Delirium", and Cristina Scabbia and Andrea Ferro went on to picture a fictional asylum modelled on a real, abandoned one they had visited. Ferro has said they tied mental illness to the small madness of daily life and made each song a room with a patient facing a different condition; "You Love Me 'Cause I Hate You" began with the Stockholm syndrome and became a song about a toxic relationship. Scabbia said they went heavier when people expected them to soften, having come to enjoy their most energetic songs most on stage, which is why, Ferro said, the heavy "The House of Shame" opens the record. The band imitated children's voices to open "Take Me Home". Myles Kennedy of Alter Bridge plays a guitar solo on "Downfall", and Nothing More's guitarist Mark Vollelunga guests on "Blood, Tears, Dust". Century Media Records released Delirium on 27 May 2016, two days after Marquee's Japanese edition with three extra songs. A lyric video for "The House of Shame" came out in April and a video for the title track in July; in 2017 Cosimo Alemà directed videos for "Blood, Tears, Dust" and "You Love Me 'Cause I Hate You". The album opened at No. 33 on the Billboard 200 on a first week of a little over 13,000 units and reached No. 2 on Hard Rock Albums and No. 4 on Top Rock Albums; in Britain it reached No. 42 on the Official Albums Chart and No. 3 on the Rock & Metal Albums Chart.