Lacuna Coil

Andrea Ferro and Marco Coti Zelati started the band in Milan in 1994, and it went by Sleep of Right and then Ethereal before it found its name. Cristina Scabbia, who would become its most recognisable voice, first came in to sing backing vocals. The band's early website tells how a two-song demo recorded as Ethereal in May 1996 went out to European labels and brought a contract with Century Media Records; another band, in Greece, already had the name Ethereal, so they became Lacuna Coil. In October 1997 they travelled to Woodhouse Studio in Hagen, Germany, where Waldemar Sorychta produced these six songs. The credits list Ferro and Scabbia on vocals, Claudio Leo and Raffaele Zagaria on guitars, Coti Zelati on bass and Leonardo Forti on drums, with Sorychta playing the keyboards himself. Ferro and Scabbia wrote the words, and the music is credited to the band as a whole. The closing "Un Fantasma Tra Noi (A Ghost Between Us)" pairs an Italian title with an English one, and the band's note for it speaks of something unseen moving inside an old building. "Falling" was reworked a year later as "Falling Again" for the first album. That December the band played its first concerts, opening for labelmates Moonspell across Europe, and came apart midway through the tour; members of Kreator and Tiamat stepped in on drums and guitar. Guitarist Cristiano Migliore and drummer Cristiano Mozzati joined in January 1998, while Leo and Zagaria went on to form Cayne. Century Media issued the EP in 1998, and that February the band supported Moonspell at the Coliseum in Lisbon in front of 4,000 people. The American edition followed in April, and in August they opened the main stage at Wacken Open Air. In 2005 the EP was reissued together with Halflife.