Lacuna Coil are looking to take your breath away with their latest atmospheric single. With that in mind, it’s only fitting that the Italian metal veterans’ newest number is called “Oxygen.”
The new track follows the recent “Hoisting the Shadow” collaboration with Lamb of God’s Randy Blythe, and it will be a part of the band’s newly confirmed tenth album, Sleepless Empire. This time around, vocal phenom Cristina Scabbia is handling the mic with elemental whimsy (“My breath is getting lighter/I float on crimson waters”) as the rest of the band leans into an outsized and epic arrangement.
“‘Oxygen’ is a powerful exploration of emotional struggle and inner conflict,” Scabbia commented. “The lyrics convey a sense of drowning in a toxic environment… where attempts at salvation, represented by ‘oxygen’ are somehow futile. This song encapsulates the feeling of struggling to break free from what holds us down, when the journey is filled with difficulty. It’s a raw anthem of vulnerability, resilience and the courage to face what seems insurmountable.”
As for the newly unveiled music video, which the band had been teasing on Instagram over the past week via a series of liquid-y snippets, it accordingly taps into that aqueous lyrical energy with dramatically plunging visuals and near-death experiences. Scabbia added that staying in the water through the shoot was “cathartic,” and you can drink in the visuals in via the player up above.
Lacuna Coil’s forthcoming Sleepless Empire album was written and recorded between Milano, Italy — the band’s hometown — and Como, Italy’s SPVN Studios. The record is explained to be themes around “the chaos of a generation trapped in a digital world that never stops,” and how social media has affected our lives.
Sleepless Empire includes both “Hosting the Shadow” and their collaborative “In the Mean Time” track with New Years Day vocalist Ash Costello. The album is due out February 14th via Century Media Records.
Sleepless Empire tracklisting:
The Siege
Oxygen
Scarecrow
Gravity
I Wish You Were Dead
Hosting the Shadow (feat. Randy Blythe)
In Nomine Patris
Sleepless Empire
Sleep Paralysis
In the Mean Time (feat. Ash Costello)
Never Dawn