“Do you want to see Lacuna Coil?” my 77-year-old father texted me. At 43, I didn’t have that on my bingo card.
I’ve been listening to Lacuna Coil since high school; the gateway to my goth years of clove cigarettes and dimly lit clubs. Meanwhile, he’s been on a symphonic metal kick—Within Temptation, Nightwish being some of his favorite bands of all time—which eventually led him to metal songstress Cristina Scabbia of Lacuna Coil. Full circle, just… decades later.
The Globe Iron doesn’t do distance. The room was tight, loud, and already buzzing by the time Australia’s VOWWS set a moody, industrial tone. Escape the Fate followed with chaotic, high-octane energy that felt like it might spill off the stage.
Then Lacuna Coil took it.
Opening with “Layers of Time,” they didn’t ease in; they hit. Scabbia and Andrea Ferro moved like counterweights. Her voice cutting clean and soaring, his grounding everything in grit. Older tracks like “Heaven’s a Lie XX” and “Swamped XX” landed like muscle memory, while newer cuts (“Oxygen,” “In Nomine Patris”) leaned heavier, colder, more deliberate.
Nothing felt phoned in. Not the pacing, not the vocals, not the connection.
Near the end, Scabbia paused: “We know money is tight… and you chose to spend your night with us.”
It could’ve been a throwaway line. It wasn’t.
Because in a packed room in Cleveland on a cold, dark March evening, it felt like everyone understood the exchange and decided it was worth it.
And for my dad? He loved it.
ESCAPE THE FATE
