Mental illness is still a subject that humans have not even begun to scratch the surface of. Caused either by a series of small unremarkable problems or potentially set in motion by one catalyst event mental illness is an impossible adversary to face. Aiming to explore the various different states of mania that we go through relating back to their current time without a guitarist, the current state of the world and of course our daily madness that we all encounter, guided by singers Cristina Scabbia and Andrea Ferro we enter the world of Delirium.

Listen to the full unedited interview in the Soundcloud file or read the transcript below!

Today I have with me Cristina Scabbia and Andrea Ferro. How are you?

Andrea : We’re good, we’re good! We’re very busy, doing a lot of interviews but at the same time there is a lot going on at home as well! We’re working on ideas for the video, we’re working on all the ideas for the upcoming tour, the setlist, the backdrop, the merchandise, the visas! So its a lot of things, luckily someone else at home is also taking care of stuff. Its very creative busy times in a good way but also a bit stressful haha!

I can imagine! Its almost like a holiday from all the stuff at home.

Andrea : The only thing of the holiday is that we are not home!

Cristina : And the travelling, thats it!

Haha, you’re new album is called Delirium. Could explain why you chose that as the title?

Cristina : Yes, the inspiration came from the word itself. We were writing music and lyrics we were just starting to write for the new record and the word Delirium came out and it opened up so many doors in terms of inspiration. We needed a complete idea of the concept that we wanted to describe. We even imagined the location, where the album is working on, we thought about this abandoned asylum that is based on real asylums that we visited close by Milano where we we live. We thought that it would have been interesting for us to describe this idea of insanity that was not only talking about the medical aspect of the word Delirium but more of the bigger concepts of the insanities that we are living everyday, things that might seem normal for all of us if you just stop for a second and you think about are pretty insane and also the historical moment where everything is going nuts around us. All of the songs are tied together with this concept.

You enlisted Marco to be the producer of the album. What was the decision for that?

Cristina : We had the chance to work with great producers in all of these years that we have been together so we thought it was more challenging and also more rewarding for us to have complete control. Taking risks in a way! We don’t have a huge producer name that we can present the album with but at the same time its probably our best record ever in terms of music, I wouldn’t say honesty because we have always been honest but that’s Lacuna Coil raw. This is really us take it or leave it and I’m happy about the job that we did.

Andrea : It was also a chance to realise how much we have learnt working with these people in the past. For the lyrics, for the vocals for the arrangement of the music, the drum parts. Understanding when its time to go crazy and when its time to just follow the vocals and support it. So we have understood that and take some responsibility but also realised how much we have learned and that we can stand on our own legs, write an album and then present music to people.

Also Marco producing it allowed us to go full on ideas. For example we have a song which is heavy with double bass so why don’t we put some screaming vocals over it. Instead of maybe trying to plan with what Lacuna Coil has been so far. What people would expect from us, even from the first song “The House Of Shame” we want to surprise the people. We want to present the song which is yes Lacuna Coil but in 2016 in a different vibe, thats probably the heaviest song we have ever written. That kind of freedom allowed us to go and be full on with what we want.

It definitely surprised me! I remember when I heard it, I thought wow! This is heavy!

Andrea : Exactly what we wanted to have was a reaction. Not just another Lacuna Coil record. We have been doing records for a while now.

It wasn’t too much for him to handle at all? Being the one person and in the band?

Andrea : It has been a bit stressful. He went through some stress, especially making sure that you can keep the schedule.

Cristina : That was probably the worst part for him. I mean he has always been the type of guy that was really creative in any way. He is pretty much spending his nights in front of his computer and comping stuff and writing music over and over. He’s really pasisonate about that so that problem wasn’t really doing it but respect the time schedule and it was really stressful about that not really because of the music itself.

Thats a good thing! It was more logistical.

Both : Yes!

Andrea : In the studio we had to sometimes things that were booked because we had vacation for Christmas and then we take some time. We had 70,000 Tons of Metal cruise in the beginning of February and we are beginning in the middle of the record which was great!

Cristina : Delirium was a great name because everything happened in that period everything that you could possibly imagine happened in that period.

Do you think it helped that you had 70,000 Tons of Metal to get away from the studio and then come back?

Cristina : Yes and no. It helped to take away the pressure because I mean we were there we were focusing on something else so it was cool to be focusing on something else that wasn’t the new record to restart with a different energy. It didn’t help in the way of time schedule because of course there were days taken away because we had specific deadline and we had to respect it.

Andrea : But in the end if those days weren’t there probably that gave us motivation to complete it in time with that time off. Maybe the stress was too much.

Cristina : There is a sense of relief and happiness when you’re gone! I think that when you are forced to meet a schedule you are even more motivated to give your best. You have to do it, you don’t take things like laying back and say “Yeah, I’ll do it tomorrow..” Its literally like lets do it now, lets do the best we can one hundred percent energy.

You’ve also got a couple of guest solos, guest spots on the album. What made you decide to have guests?

Andrea : First of all this is the first record where we don’t have proper guitar player in the line up. Marco has been recording all of the guitar parts because h e wrote the songs but his main things is the bass. He can also play guitar obviously as a composer but he has never been somebody very refined. So it was a challenge for him, when we decided to do the leads we thought to ask for some friends to join in and see what was coming out of it. Having different vibes, different touches. So we asked Myles from Alter Bridge, Myles Kennedy.

Because he is a friend of ours she (Cristina) did a duet with them a few years ago since a few years ago and since then we have always been in touch. We played his hometown in America in Spokane and he came out with his wife to see the show and hang out with us. Then we met him several times when we played with Slash around Europe or in America so we have been in touch after all these years so it was natural for us to ask him. Everybody knows him to be a great singer but not many people know that he is as much of a good singer as he is a guitarist. So we asked him to do it and he loved the idea and picked one song and just delivered.

Cristina : And then we asked Mark Vollelunga who is the guitar player of a good upcoming band called Nothingmore. We toured with them, it was actually their first tour ever in the States and they did it with us and ever since we have been in touch, he’s come to Milano and even it was almost natural because we knew that he was a good guitar player. Then other friends of ours Marco Barusso the sound engineer of Delirium and then Diego Cavalotti and Alessandro our friends who are guitar players. It was cool I think it added so much, as Andrea said its probably the first time that we had so many solos and so many guitar parts in the record. They made it even more interesting because each one of them has a very distinctive sound and you can hear it and that made the album so much bigger. 

Do you think that is because of the departure of the guitarist? 

Cristina : Well that led to this, so its nothing that we planned. Its something that came out after it happened, we said “Ok Marco is going to write and record all of the parts” and he wrote them so it was just a matter of time and just to get a little more confidence with the guitar because he is not strictly a guitar player. Then we started to think about the solos specifically. Then we said that in the solos there is always the personality of a guitar player and they are not easy to do even if you are a good guitar player. Thats the part where you get the spot, you get all the attention and every guitar player has a different approach. Some are more technical, some like to be more about feelings. Each one has a distinctive style so with every song we thought of something different and I think its really cool!

Andrea : The funny thing is this is the record where we don’t have a proper guitar player in the line up but its the record with the most guitar solos ever in our career. 

Cristina : It makes the concept of Delirium even better because its like “Oh my god whats happening now! Lets find a way to work with the guitars” haha! 

The album cover is a picture as far as I know, so what made you decide to have it as a portrait? 

Cristina : Well first of all we liked the look of it. It had the word Delirium in it so it was a good choice in our opinion and also the fact that it was completely out of the blue. We didn’t plan a cover, we didn’t think about a cover and then reproduce it in a picture. We took different pictures in this location that we found, that we scouted for that was really looking disturbing. I don’t know if you have seen the band pictures that were put around its not a set up. Its not something that we built, its a real room that we found and said this is really creepy, this is really weird, perfect and we used it. In that area we found a little room that you don’t really see, its like a very hidden place and we found this mirror and we took very few shots, maybe four or five in total of the same type of picture and all of a sudden I got this idea of drawing the word Delirium on the mirror and when we saw the final thing we said why not! 

Andrea : It came out stronger than we ever expected it to be and actually all of the artwork is all photos and graphics. We wanted to be as realistic as possible because when we were exploring the concept we were looking at pictures of patients from real sanitoriums. Especially the beginning of the century, many years ago and they looked so weird and scary without having anything Horror. They didn’t have blood, theres no soundtrack to surprise you it was just their blank eyes, their position of their body, completely different from how we look and stand. Some people seemed to float on their back, they were just lying down but they were so nervous, they almost seemed like they were floating over the bed. 

Cristina : Its sounds like a mysterious word, very stigmatized because its not easy to talk about mental illnesses especially in a medical way because we don’t know much about it. We know that it might happen to each one of us, we see it as something that we don’t recognize something that we don’t know but at the same time we are attracted because we would like to know more and we would like to understand.

Its that kind of curiosity..

Cristina : That’s what led us to talk more about the topic. 

So that’s a topic that you are exploring the idea of not only insanity in the modern day…

Cristina : It was fitting with the concept, it was good for the vision as well because you can really visualise this record but its also coming from personal experiences. So its not that we just did some research and opened a book and looked at the pictures. We’re also talking about personal episodes of depression or people in the family who really had to have medication for serious problems. This type so its coming from real experiences as well, we didn’t want to make a fake record just because it was cool to talk about something like that. Its actually also a risk because its not easy to talk about that in a way that is not offensive or on the other side cheesy. 

And you can tell straight away if someone is trying to fake something.

Andrea : That’s what we wanted to avoid, to not be superficial. That’s why we touched the medical issue but just using it as a metaphor. Its not a report, a scientific report its more like how the delirium illness and the illness you experience personally in a way. 

Cristina : We treat it with curiosity as well because we know to a certain extent and would like to know more but we certainly know all the little insanity moments that we might live in our lives. You know with the internet or the chaos that’s going on all around us. 

Onto maybe a slightly happier subject, what are you plans once the album has been released?

Cristina : Well we have plans for the pre release of the record because we are going to be playing in the Phillipines at the end of the month for the first time, we’re going to be playing in China for the first time which is really exciting as well. Then we are going to go to the states for a tour and there are going to be some dates with Halestorm, then we’re coming back to Europe for summer festivals. We have already announced some gigs in Italy, France Austria but there are a lot more to be announced. Then we are thinking in the fall probably Australia maybe Japan maybe a new world tour. We’re still planning and booking!

So is China a first?

Both : Yes!

Andrea : Yes, both are festivals Phillipines its us Protest The Hero, We Are Harlot, Born of Osiris its a bunch of bands and its a festival that has been running for sixteen years actually and its 20,000 people. Its the biggest one they have. 

Finally what has been a record you guys have been listening to for a year, six months something that you really kind of attached to?

Cristina : In general I would say, even if its an old record?

Yeah! 

Cristina : I would say Draconian Times of Paradise Lost, they are a huge influence on me. They are if not the first band, the first second band together with Type O Negative who made me want to be part of the Metal world in a very deep way. Of course there were other bands like Pantera, Metallica even Clawfinger years ago but Paradise Lost and Type O Negative. I would say Paradise Lost’s Draconian Times is my favourite record. 

And for you Andrea?

Andrea : I don’t have just one favourite I like too many the one I still listen to very often is Alice In Chains, Dirt, one of my favourites. When it came out I kind of felt all of the drugs they were doing all the psychedelic influences you felt it in the record,in the riffs and in the voice in the way he was talking. I love it because it would always give me comfort when I was drunk but I really listened to it a million times. Its probably one of my favourite records ever. 

Cristina : Angel Dust from Faith No More, there are so many good records! 

Andrea : Its hard to name one recently in the last five years I would have to name one record that gave me that kind of feeling but I don’t know if I can! I have some regulars that I like but as much I don’t know, I would really struggle to say that for the recent times. 

Well thank you ever so much the both of you! 

Cristina : You’re welcome! Thank you!