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Disc one features live performance footage is taken from the bands 2007 Wacken festival appearance as well as the 2007 Loudpark Festival in Japan as well as four of the bands most recent music videos. Nothing to be said about the enthusiasm of Lacuna Coil; that is as always great, you certainly can't take that away from them! Lacuna Coil diva Cristina knows how to capture the audience with her bewitched face and amazing vocals, Cristina's sheer intensity live is matched by none and it comes across very well on film! Vocalist Andrea Ferro certainly has an energetic stage persona and the band follow suit. During the bands performances at Wacken and Loudpark the band are tight and sound amazing. I was hoping to hear more of the crowd though, anytime I watch live footage or listen to live CD's when the vocalists ask the crowd to sing along, I love when you can actually hear them. In some ways 'Visual Karma' is overproduced and loses a little of the live feel from that standpoint, but otherwise there is no faulting these performances. The band's Waken set was filled with all the obvious live gems and some of the standouts for me were 'Swamped', 'Fragile', 'Enjoy the Silence' and 'Senzafine'. This daytime performance is really awesome to watch, watching a band in a day time atmosphere is always a completely different experience to the run of the mill night time arena style shows. You never seem to miss anything onstage and the bands always look like they are working much harder to keep your attention. Unfortunately for this fantastic band, the Wacken festival crowd didn't seem all that interested in Lacuna Coils killer set! Amongst the crowd you can see many Lacuna Coil fans, but you could also see the curious amongst the crowd and those who were just holding the spots waiting to see the bands they were there to really see! As a fan of the bands work and having seen them live twice I enjoyed the Wacken performance even if at points it didn't look like the crowd was. Fast tracking to the Japanese Loudpark festival... Of the two this was a much cooler live show to watch, the nighttime performance felt right, more like those we are all used to seeing. The crowd was much more responsive to Lacuna Coil and the set was amazing. Even though the waken set was primarily the larger of both performances showcased, I enjoyed the Loudpark footage just as much. 'To the Edge', 'Daylight Dancer' and 'Within Me' were amongst the standout tracks from this show and the footage certainly left me wanting more! As much as I enjoyed watching the live footage from these two kick ass festivals I think Lacuna Coil would have been much better off using footage from the bands own headlining shows for their very first Dvd. It obvious that when you are playing to hundreds of thousands of metal fans in Europe or Japan that you want to capture that and show the world, but footage of Lacuna Coil's own shows would have had greater footage of fans and louder more vocally responsive fans who were there solely to see this great metal band rather than playing to mixed festival crowds.
Disc two of 'Visual Karma' DVD showcases the personality of the band. There are segments about each band member, each doing something different the personal video's of each Lacuna Coil member, for example the effort of Vocalist Cristina Scabbia talks about the project the band did raising money for water wells in Kenya, and there is footage of that. Of all the band segments this one was by far the most interesting to me, I always love to see metal artists really pouring out there heart and souls into projects such as this one. It shows a much more "Real" side to the artist. Andrea Ferro's segment is him giving a tour of Milan, Italy. It's a different and interesting way to profile Lacuna Coil. I loved the making of videos for 'Our Truth' and 'Closer'. Knowing so many bands hate doing video shoots, I always find it fascinating to see what goes on behind the scenes, watching the various angles shot, the bloopers and all the insanity that goes along with making a 4 minute video over one or two days.
The behind the scenes footage was awesome, I love how the band included not only the making of videos but also footage from the bands first visit to Japan and also Australia. The behind the scenes footage from the Australian Gigantour was really cool to see, having witnessed Lacuna Coil live at both Sydney shows I was interested to see how much footage would be shown from the Australian leg and to my surprise there would be 10 – 15 minutes of great footage, backstage pranks, live spots, in store signings and more. The funniest part for me was Cristina showing everyone her private Dressing/changing room, I don't want to give it away so make sure when you buy the Dvd you check that out, it's classic! The fan submissions were okay, but by far not the greatest thing on this two-disc set. Sometimes it looked like we're dealing with some fourteen-year-old girls that were worshipping a famous boy-band and that was just too weird for me! Co-vocalist Andrea Ferro once said "We've been asked a million times about when we were gonna put out a band Dvd; truthfully, we never felt like it was a priority". I have always felt that was a great quote from Andrea who always put the bands musical endeavors first over compiling hours of footage for a Dvd release. With the bands popularity growing at such a fast pace, it would only be a matter of time before someone made it a priority to put together a Dvd on Lacuna Coil and in the end they did a great job! Did they make it a priority? Who knows but I certainly enjoyed most of the footage that was shown over the 2 discs. For the male fans amongst us who love the beautiful Cristina just remember… any day you can see Cristina is going to be a good day, even if it's only on your TV screen! Overall 'Visual Karma' is a great Dvd and I'm sure Lacuna Coil fans like myself will enjoy all that is on offer, we can only hope that the next DVD installment features footage of the band live during one of their own headlining shows and more crazy backstage footage.
'Visual Karma' is out now via Century Media; pick up your copy today! Don't Miss Lacuna Coil Touring Australia In February As Part Of The Soundwave Festival!
Disc One
Live Wacken 2007
Intro
To The Edge
Fragments of Faith
Swamped
In Visible Light
Fragile
Closer
Senzafine
What I see
Enjoy the Silence
Heaven's a Lie
Our Truth
Loudpark Festival 2007
Intro/To the Edge
Swamped
Closer
Within Me
Daylight Dancer
Our Truth
Our Truth Video
Enjoy The Silence Video
Closer Video
Within Me Video
Disc Two
The Karma Chronicles
Cristina Scabbia - Simple As Water
Andrea Ferro - Inside Milan
Cristiano 'Pizza' Migliore - The Leaning Journey Of Pizza
Marco 'Maus' Biazzi - 7-Seven' Strings Life
Marco Coti Zelati - The Real Thing
CriZ - Enter The Drummer
Behind The Scenes
Australian Tour 2007
First Time In Japan
Making Of The Our Truth Video
Making Of The Closer Video
Breaking The Code: The Fans
Top 10 Fan Submissions
Empty Spiral Interview
To the Edge remix Contest
Rating: 80
Reviewed By: Cameron Edney - http://www.myspace.com/insideout666ints