Our Truth

This single was precursor to the questionably received 'Karmacode' bearing the albums first hit, a remix of said hit, a hit from the prior album and a single only track.

Our Truth is a very catchy song that has a sexy vibe and killer vocals. The biggest drawback to this would the noticeable Korn-esq bass lines/tone. Aside from that, the guitars sound good, the drums are great and the chord structure/progressions are original.

The remix of this is a take or leave affair as this will appeal to only a few. The "prior hit" is 'Swamped' and its one of that albums "single" versions with quieter guitars and louder/hollow sounding vocals.

The single only track 'Without a Reason' is one of the best Lacuna Coil songs ever written. This song would have fit perfectly on 'Unleashed Memories', or perhaps a bridging track between 'In Reverie' and 'Unleashed Memories'. This is a sold Doom Metal track, slow and somber. The mood is dark; the guitars are heavy and melodic. The bass sounds like old LC. The drums move around the creepy melody flawlessly. Both singers causing the song to take on a haunting quality.

It’s a damn shame that the album didn't have this tracks quality; it would have been well received and possibly blown their older more underground records out of the water. This is worth hunting down for this track alone

I read many mixed reviews and many more negative ones directed towards Lacuna Coil’s latest LP “Karmacode”, so naturally I elected to take a little less monetary risk and invested in one of the singles tied to the album in order to get an idea of exactly what changes had occurred, and there have been many. Whether or not one regards this new sound that they’ve adopted is mostly a matter of taste, rather than quality as many have suggested.

If “Our Truth” is any indication of the entire sound of the Karmacode, it seems that LC has elected to go with the down-tuned groove riff approach that is mostly representative of the metal-core style. Personally I’m not a huge fan of this style because it usually features extremely terrible sounding vocals, both clean and screamed. Naturally Cristina has an angelic voice and here this has not changed so the worst element of the style is absent, and likewise the sloppy and overloud drumming isn’t present on here so essentially this could qualify as a quasi-core/quasi-gothic approach, and it works fairly well.

“Without a Reason” is a bit more representative of the claims by some that the band has gone quasi-Evanescence on us, but thankfully without the rapped vocals heard on “Bring me to Life”. People seem to forget that Evanescence essentially took their sound from LC and that they are accusing them of plagiarizing themselves and simultaneously sounding similar to someone emulating them, as strange as that may sound.

“Swamped” is one of the better songs from Comalies and a welcome addition to this single. If you haven’t heard that album, picture a more Sirenia-like approach to gothic metal with more clean female vocals and a dirty yet still tonal male counterpart. The remix of “Our Truth” on track 4, which one my version is the “Jack Dangers mix”, is the only thing worth skipping on here. It’s mostly mechanical noise with drums that are thin sounding and way too high in the mix.

I can’t really say the new LC sound is as horrible as many say based on what I’ve heard here, but it’s not up to what was heard on previous work. The main thing that needs to happen in order for them to regain ground on their next release is to get away from the style of production they’ve adopted here, which relies a bit too much on vocal effects and muddied guitars and not enough on atmosphere.