When it comes to a darkly seductive thrill ride through the heart of atomic-intensity metal, Lacuna Coil are the group you can count on - a bit like the friends you know will always come well supplied with booze to any house party worth its salt.
The band's latest effort Dark Adrenaline lives up to its intoxicatingly chemical title - riotous, rowdy, and at its best, positively swashbuckling in its fist-punch guitar riffs. Aside from a bizarre mistep on an out-of-odds cover of Losing My Religion, the album plays out as a tour-de-force in high-powered contemporary metal. It's slick, driven and remarkably vital for a band six albums into the game.
It is in Give Me Something More that the band truly hit their stride here - Christina Scabbia's vocals are at their most clear, most thoroughly hedonistic, and deliver up a blood-hot middle-eight of brilliant proportions. Dark Adrenaline's obvious sister album would be Evanescence's recent self-titled LP, but on Give Me Something More, Lacuna Coil easily exceed it in sheer hook quality.
Pushing the band's core sound to its most excitingly pleasurable possibilities, it's reassuring that under all that wall-of-sound guitar passion, they can serve a rousing pop chorus.
Dark Adrenaline is available to download from iTunes now.
