Lacuna Coil / This Is She

Italian gothic metal band Lacuna Coil are currently undertaking a huge world tour. The tour is being billed as 'The Dark Legacy Tour', and is essentially a greatest hits tour. Tonight they stop off in Norwich and the city's Waterfront venue.



Support tonight comes from a young four-piece from Los Angeles, California, named This Is She. This Is She are fronted by the talented Alana Grace, whose hauntingly beautiful voice is the centre piece of their sound. Grace is surrounded in this group by talent and their performance tonight is a true highlight.

Their set tonight is made up of tracks from their debut EP entitled 'Nobody Is Ok'. Tracks such as 'Grow Up', 'Disobey', 'Misery' and 'Brace Myself' show various influences on their musical style such as rock, metal, electronic and even dubstep. They finish their show by following in the footsteps of Korn and Muse with a full blown dubstep blowout. If all was right with the world this band will be huge, so keep your eyes peeled.

As you entered the venue this evening there was a large sign warning that tonight's performance will feature high power strobe lighting. This partnered with the fact that this tour is a two hour greatest hits set, built anticipation for Lacuna Coil's performance nicely.



Having formed in 1994, Lacuna Coil have released six studio albums starting with 1999's 'In A Reverie' and finishing with this year's 'Dark Adrenaline'. Tonight's performance is set to feature material from across these albums. The venue isn't sold out but is still pretty full as the band take to the stage to their intro tape.

If everything was to plan for the Italians, I would be saying that they burst straight into opening track 'I Don't Believe In Tomorrow'. Things don't go to plan however as technical issues revolving around a MacBook, supposed to be playing absent bassist Marco Coti Zelati's parts, cause the band to stop before they even begin. The band decide to stay onstage and fix the issue, leading to shouts of "have you tried turning it off and on again" from the crowd.



Front pair Cristina Scabbia and Andrea Ferro take it all in their stride however and make the most of the time for an impromptu interview/autograph signing segment with the crowd. The audience remain in good spirits throughout these technical issues and the banter continues when Scabbia informs us that she is an "Apple girl", and a member of the crowd responds "you should have got Windows."

Lacuna Coil push on through the problems for the first five songs, but with the issues persisting, they make the decision to move forward tonight's acoustic portion whilst the offending MacBook is examined. Scabbia and Ferro proceed to serenade us with a selection of acoustic numbers, leading Scabbia to quip "humans 1, computer 0".

With the infamous MacBook now onside the band return to the stage and push on through the rest of their hit laden set. New Album 'Dark Adrenaline' is featured heavily tonight as you would expect and new songs such as 'Trip The Darkness' and 'My Spirit' hold their own with older material like 'Our Truth' and 'Spellbound'.

Lacuna Coil are clearly passionate about what they do and are appreciative of their loyal fans. They evidence this further by returning to the stage for an unscheduled encore of the songs that were missed out due to the acoustic set being moved forward; ensuring that despite the technical issues the crowd gets to witness the whole show. And it was a decent show with one of the best light shows The Waterfront has seen in a long time.

This is a great little package of a tour with Lacuna Coil using their experience to deliver, even with the early problems, a top set. Combine this with the very impressive This Is She and you have an entertaining night out.

FUTURE GIGS