Lacuna Coil, May 22, 2007, Garrick Theatre, Winnipeg w Stolen Babies & The Gathering

Italy's Lacuna Coil played the Garrick theatre to a crowd of about 500 fans.

Openers Stolen Babies played a diverse amount of material, including a few with an accordion. Their sound ranged from goth-pop to techno-industrial metal and all sounds in between. Sometimes it worked, other times, it was all right. I dug the fact that they dare to be different.

The Gathering are another female fronted band and despite the fact that they have several CDs out (15) according to the guy at the merch booth who sold me their latest, their name never really registered with me before. However, their laid back, moody metal with keyboard ambience won me over, especially when they went into what seemed to be a 15-minute jam. While it was more repetitive than inventive, the jam had a calming affect on me, like I could just lie down and float away to the music.



Lacuna Coil have two lead singers, one female, one male, and a dandy computer to play all the keyboard parts. Coil weren't better than The Gathering to my ears, just a bit different. Like so many metal bands today, they owe a huge debt to 'Tallica for their crunchy sound, but thankfully, unlike many of the metal bands that I have seen in the last few years, Coil don't try to come across as Slayer / 'Tallica clones with pointless thrash intensity and cookie monster vocals. Lesser bands try to clone successful bands and try to make up their lack of originality by being heavier and faster than the next band. Coil may be similar to Evanescence, but I wouldn't call them a copy cat band. I wonder which band has been around longer.

For around $25, this was a great way to spend an evening.