Perhaps the Coil's last "metal days of yore" supporter on the planet, I fear it's time to close the book. Not for good, as recent efforts from Metallica and Paradise Lost (both also strewn on the nostalgia-only heap) have shown you can go home again. Despite protests and condemnation from metalheads and fellow journos, sticking with the Italians through “Comalies” and especially “Karmacode” proved a fallow field.

All 12 tracks fail to crack four minutes, seemingly calculated to provide an endless parade of bland US radio singles (or whatever passes for creating a buzz in the decaying halls of the music industry these days). Long a second fiddle to Cristina Scabbia (and rightly so), Andrea Ferro's voice/enunciation has been smoothed over (a staccato ‘The Maze’ is practically a solo, Scabbia virtually relegated to the choruses) as his rapid delivery and aggressive (forced?) patter aren't necessary anywhere on this homogenized record. It's hard to imagine WHO “Shallow Life” is targeted towards.  The dismal interpersonal relationships that form its lyrical backbone would portent the (pre-) teen market who've seen Lacuna Coil on one of the big outdoor package tours. Yet there’s no sense of the urgency (no ‘Senzafine’ either) they so desperately need at this juncture in their career. This phoned-in performance belies the onstage energy and vehemence so often perpetrated at those events. A moment of levity can be found in ‘I Won’t Tell You’ which utilizes a twist on the title of one of their hits as a lyric. Elsewhere, two out-and-out piano-accompanied ballads (‘Wide Awake’ and the closing title cut) for Cristina are balanced by ‘Spellbound’, the lone rocker in the bland bunch. With drum machine and danceable backbeat so prominently on display', shallow and lifeless indeed.