Lacuna Coil

To hell with Frank Sinatra. Suck a fat one, Luciano Pavarotti. Do the waiters at Olive Garden look lovelorn, starstruck or even happy to you? Enter Lacuna Coil, a band for every Italian who hears “Dominick, the Italian Christmas Donkey” and is provoked to put on black eyeliner and smash something with a crowbar. And not Pauly Walnuts’ kneecaps, either. (Enter other Italian stereotypes here.) The Milan sextet bucks the traditions of the homeland in favor of good old American, epic, hard rock, complete with soaring female vocals and grinding guitars. Kind of like the Italiano version of Evanescence, only we’ll give Lacuna Coil the benefit of the doubt. The band members could charge admission for their Web bios alone. They not only give their height and weight in meters and kilograms (fucking metric system) but also offer some of their favorite things, including The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Abba and Whoopi Goldberg. Something has been horribly, irrecoverably lost in the translation.