Alex Haber of Heavy New York recently conducted an interview with vocalists Cristina Scabbia and Andrea Ferro of Italian heavy rockers LACUNA COIL. You can watch the entire chat below. A few excerpts follow (transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET).

On the band's forthcoming "Black Anima" studio album:

Cristina: "Of course it is a different record and we didn't think about it as the follower of 'Delirium'. But, of course, it is an evolution of 'Delirium' in a way that it is the next in line with our experiences and with our lives. But, the concept and the idea behind it is completely different than 'Delirium'. We thought about 'Black Anima' as sort of our own book in which we see all the human feelings, even the feelings we tend to hide, like hate and envy — the bad feelings that sometimes you try to keep inside and not share with someone else. And, it is a consideration of where we are right now as adults, with all the things we did in the past. Living in the present, as it is."

Andrea: "I think a common thing with 'Delirium', is maybe that we took it as a starting point, in a way that we have gone a bit more free on 'Delirium', musically, especially going more toward the heavy sound, the heavy side of LACUNA COIL. I think that we discovered with 'Delirium', when we do whatever we want and pursue a heavier path, our music sounds really good. People really like it. We decided we wouldn't worry, 'Okay, this is too heavy for what people expect from us.' Or, 'This is too complicated.' We went with the flow of the music. We felt more free. That's what we learned from 'Delirium'."

On whether Scabbia and Ferro need to hear the music first before they write lyrics:

Cristina: "I think it's a combination of things because we always loved to combine something strong visually to our music. It's not that we sit down with a piece of paper and mechanically say 'This is going to be connected to this and that.' Of course, the music comes first. Then, we thought about 'Black Anima', the whole idea of the book came out, and the symbol Marco [Coti Zelati, bass] created came out, and this was related to the actual symbol of Milan that inspired the logo. So everything is connected. But, it's something more subtle, not as mechanical. It's hard for us sometimes to describe why we did something, why we decided for some sort of graphics in the record. For us, everything came naturally and connected, but it's hard to talk about it in a way that could be completely understandable from everyone else."

Andrea: "We're trying to brainstorm all together at the same time. When Marco goes in a certain direction with the music and is maybe stuck somewhere and we give him some input from the lyrics or titles or a book that I read or an idea that can help him develop toward a certain direction, for this record, we worked in this way. We were brainstorming about the topics that we wanted to face, like the past three years we've been through losing family members or friends. We're now at an age where we can have a different approach to these things. I was also reading on the side, a book called 'The Physics Of Angels', which was an analysis of the figure of angels and spirits, faced by two people. One was a scientist and one was a religious person, so it was how both approached it from a different angle to the topic. That was very interesting for me. That also helped to put together the concept and help us develop the lyrics, using these, but not as a full concept album. It's more like this is the generic theme we want to have for the image, for the approach to the lyrics, and for certain sides of the graphics and the music, but then we also talk about our personal stories."

Cristina: "It's coming from different angles, because if you think about the fact Marco, our bass player, writes the music separately from us, because he's the one who composes the music, but then, we contribute with music that are ending something completely different, that maybe Marco might not completely know. It comes from total teamwork conveying in the record. That's what gives the spirit to the record itself."

On whether LACUNA COIL has a formula they like to stick to when writing:

Andrea: "Not so much. I think in all these years, we've developed a certain personality as a band, with certain characteristics. If you hear the voices, you know it's probably going to be us. But, obviously, we try to keep it fresh for ourselves first, because we're going to live with these songs for the rest of our life and we're going to play them a lot of times. We try to do, as she said, something that pleases ourselves first. But, maybe [this] is the kind of people we are. We like to keep it fresh. We like a lot of interesting stuff like video games or comics, movies, TV series, like everything fresh we need to be fed with freshness and art and ideas all the time. It's important for us to give back the same, to gather all these experiences and art and ideas, then push it back toward something new."

"Black Anima" will be released on October 11 through Century Media Records.

LACUNA COIL and ALL THAT REMAINS will join forces for the "Disease Of The Anima" North American co-headlining tour. The trek includes special guests BAD OMENS, TOOTHGRINDER (September 15 - October 10), EXIMIOUS (October 11 - October 19) and UNCURED.