Lacuna Coil have released a double single celebrating the 20th anniversary of ‘Karmacode’: ‘Fragile XX’, a reworked version of ‘Fragile’, and a remix of ‘I Wish You Were Dead’ by SWARM. The release ties together two eras of the Italian band: ‘Fragile’ opened ‘Karmacode’ in 2006, while ‘I Wish You Were Dead’ comes from ‘Sleepless Empire’, their most recent album. ‘Fragile XX’ arrives with a lyric video.
“‘Fragile’ has always been a live favorite, it was actually one of the very first songs we debuted on stage even before ‘Karmacode’ was released 20 years ago,” vocalist Andrea Ferro said. “Its message of accepting life’s vulnerability, never surrendering though we live in a fragile circle that is often breached, is one that we still relate to today. While reworking a much loved song can initially feel unsettling (in particular for Maki, our main songwriter), we faced the process as a tribute to ‘Fragile’ and ‘Karmacode’, and are really excited by the result. ‘Fragile XX’ feels and sounds like Lacuna Coil in 2026, and we look forward to performing it live for the next 20 years!”
SWARM, the dark electronic project of Brandon Thomas Carroll, who has collaborated with Bad Omens, Till Lindemann and HEALTH, described himself as a longtime fan. “I remember hearing ‘Karmacode’ back in the mid-2000’s and thinking that the melodies sounded so interesting & exotic. That whole album really helped to shape my taste in music, and I have been a fan ever since,” he said. “I’m cautious about agreeing to do remixes, especially when it’s for a band I love. I never ‘remix for the sake of remix’. I want to make it worth the listen; to respect the original while tastefully (and aggressively) turning it upside down and shaking something absolutely crazy out. I’m very proud of how I was able to do that here.”
‘Karmacode’ arrived March 31, 2006, in Italy and April 4 in the U.S. via Century Media, produced by Waldemar Sorychta. It peaked at No. 28 on the Billboard 200, No. 17 in Italy and No. 47 in the U.K., and sold around 500,000 copies worldwide. Its singles were ‘Our Truth’, ‘Closer’, ‘Within Me’ and a cover of Depeche Mode‘s ‘Enjoy the Silence’; ‘Closer’ later appeared in the video games ‘Guitar Hero III’ and ‘Rock Band’, and ‘Our Truth’ in ‘Rock Band 2’ and ‘Guitar Hero World Tour’.
‘Sleepless Empire’, the band’s 10th studio album, was released Feb. 14, 2025, via Century Media and produced by Marco “Maki” Coti Zelati. Its 11 tracks include guest spots from Lamb of God‘s Randy Blythe on ‘Hosting the Shadow’ and New Years Day‘s Ash Costello on ‘In the Mean Time’, and ‘I Wish You Were Dead’ was issued as a single Feb. 10, 2025, four days before the album, which peaked at No. 14 in Switzerland and No. 20 in Germany. It was the group’s first full-length since ‘Comalies XX’ (2022), their reimagining of their 2002 album, and Blabbermouth called it “voluminous, intricately layered and, at its gnarliest, genuinely punishing.”
Lacuna Coil return to the road in February and March 2027 as support for The Halo Effect on a European tour that also features Omnium Gatherum. The run covers 23 shows in 11 countries, from Feb. 19 at Hamburg’s Grosse Freiheit 36 to March 18 at Tampereen Tullikamari in Tampere, Finland, with stops in Paris, Madrid, Barcelona, Vienna, Prague, Warsaw and Helsinki, among others.
