Lacuna Coil’s Cristina Scabbia explains band’s silence during livestream

Lacuna Coil’s Livestream event on Saturday (27th), was much different than their virtual performance from this past fall. The Italian metal outfit were one of the nearly 130 artists and venues who participated in L’ Ultimo Concerto? (Last Concert), to showcase the ongoing uncertainty of concerts and events as we’ve entered one year of the COVID-19 pandemic. Instead of performing, the group took to the stage and stood there in complete silence.

The group explained via Instagram:

“For those watching from all over the world, we’re sorry you guys didn’t get to see the show you were expecting. We just stood in silence, showing our support to the live club scene. Unfortunately, live clubs in Italy and the rest of the world have been closed for a year now, and there’s no sign of reopening anytime soon. We believe they should get the right attention and recognition, because that is what they deserve: to be considered as cultural spaces. Hopefully, this initiative will bring their uncertain situation to everybody’s attention.”

Later, vocalist Cristina Scabbia further explained the band’s decision to protest their performance:

“I know that a lot of you guys have been connecting to the web site ultimoconcerto.it expecting a live concert that never happened. What you saw was a video of us entering the venue Alcatraz in Milan and standing still on the stage, looking at an empty club. What we did was taking part in an Italian strike, and I’m here explaining it in English because a lot of you guys probably couldn’t read what was written on the web site and couldn’t figure out that this event was already really strange from the beginning, because more than 120 Italian bands playing from different clubs at the same time was already something very unusual — let alone the fact that we never really promoted it, we never really talked about it, we never reposted some of your posts, and if you think about ‘Live From The Apocalypse,’ we always did that. Of course, we couldn’t say anything, because the purpose was to make noise,” she continued. “So I absolutely understand your frustration, I absolutely understand your anger, and believe me, all of us wanted to be on that stage to play a real concert for you. What you have to understand, though, [is] it is not easy to organize a concert, and there are costs behind it that you cannot imagine. So the point of the Italian strike that happened yesterday was to bring attention to the fact that clubs have been closed for a year because of the pandemic, and we don’t know when they are gonna be reopening again. So I want to thank you guys, because even with your angry messages, even with your disappointment, you helped us to scream even louder. Some of you guys wrote, it is useless to ‘attack’ or ‘use the fans,’ which is something that we never did intentionally. Well, think about the fact that the band is followed by a lot of journalists as well, so your angry comments are even more helping the music scene, because people will see this and will see that music without live clubs is missing a huge part. So I’m here to thank you guys and to tell you that we’re really hurt by some of the comments, but we know that this will be worth it. So we want to thank you. Hopefully, we’ll see you in a real club, in a real show very, very soon. And thank you for the understanding. We love you guys.”