Cristina Scabbia is one of the most recognisable voices in metal. Since she joined Lacuna Coil almost three decades ago as the band’s co-vocalist alongside barker Andrea Ferro, the band have risen to become the biggest metal band in Italian history.
In that time, they’ve constantly evolved and reinvented themselves. They broke through with the ethereal gothic metal of 2002’s Comalies, flirted with nu metal on 2006’s Karmacode, and have steadily embraced a heavier sound over the last decade. Through it all, Cristina’s crystalline vocals have remained a crucial element of the band’s serene /harsh sound. And they’re continuing to soar; their latest album, 2025’s dark and decadent Sleepless Empire, is one of the band’s best offerings to date. But Cristina wasn’t always comfortable in the spotlight.
“I was always… not even drawn, but pushed into music,” she says today. “When I started, it was because my friends were like, ‘Come on, sing in the club. Come on, sing in the studio.’”
Her first foray into music was singing over dance tracks in her local Milan club scene.
“I remember that I was hiding myself and singing with a microphone underneath the mixer, because I didn't want to show myself,” she continues. “I didn't want to appear. I didn't do it because I was like, ‘Hey, look at me.’ I just enjoyed it.”
In 1996, she joined the band of her then-boyfriend, bassist Marco Coti Zelati, and Andrea Ferro. Formerly known as Sleep Of Right, after Cristina’s arrival, they changed their name to Lacuna Coil. Little did they know where it would lead.
“Marco knew that I was a singer, so they were asked if I wanted to jump on board because they wanted to do something different,” Cristina smiles. “But back then, I would have never in a million years imagined that I would be still here after more than 20 years.”
You were born in Milan in 1972. What was your childhood like?
“It was a very normal childhood. I was the last one of four in my family, two brothers and a sister. I was born on the fifth of June. But because my parents were undecided on my name, they registered me on the sixth. So I was born 06/06, but in reality, I was born on the fifth. I grew up in Quarto Oggiaro, a very turbulent area in Milan, full of Mafia people and drugs. I always joke about the fact that half my friends were drug addicts, and the other were dealers. I never got caught up in this, I just wasn’t interested in drugs.”
You were raised by your parents as a Catholic. Would you identify as Catholic today?
“Sometimes I want to believe in God when it’s convenient, because sometimes religion can be very selfish. You believe in something because you need to make yourself feel better. But I lean more towards scientific reason. I need proof. I always found it very boring to go to church. I understood the idea behind it, but I never really found something that was heartfelt. It was never aligned to my opinion. I think that turned me off and made me question it.”
Before you joined Lacuna Coil, you were involved in the dance music scene. How did you get into it?
“Ever since I was 16, 17, I had been going out to clubs. And then I met some DJs that were doing some productions. They would create a loop, and I would sing over it.”
Can we listen to the dance songs that you recorded?
“They were released, but I don’t know where you can find them. I don’t want anybody to listen to them anyway! I’ll keep the secret. I never had the desire to become the next pop singer. Even though I liked pop and dance music, I didn’t really feel that I wanted to make that music. We went to a music convention to present one of the songs by the DJ, and I remember the day after, two guys separately came to me saying they were producers. They gave me their card, and they were basically trying to take me to bed. And I was just like, ‘What the fuck is this? I don't want to be part of this’.”
How did you discover metal?
“I found metal when I started to hang out and work at a pub in Milan called Midnight. That’s the place where I met Marco [Coti Zelati] and Andrea as well, our bass player and singer. It was where Lacuna Coil was born. A friend of mine was a fan of Metallica, and I liked the most mellow stuff, The Unforgiven or Nothing Else Matters. Then I got interested in Iron Maiden, because a friend of mine loved them. As a birthday gift, I got him a cassette because I was intrigued by the cover.”
Midnight became the centre of an uproar. Two people went missing after a night there, in 1998. It turned out they had been murdered by a group calling themselves the Beasts of Satan. What do you remember about that?
“I actually knew one of the people who did it, the guy named Ozzy [Paolo ‘Ozzy’ Leoni], who actually worked at Midnight as well. He was absolutely normal. He hung out with a friend of mine, and she would tell me that he was the sweetest guy ever. And I also know the father of one of the victims, Michele Tollis, the father of [victim] Fabio Tollis, because he came to many concerts, trying to figure out what happened to his son. We stayed in touch. He comes to our gigs every once in a while.”
Was there any indication that there was a Satanic gang meeting up at the pub?
“Absolutely not. It was just a pub. If they went there to drink a beer and discuss the fucking sick things they were doing or thinking, it’s not the pub’s fault. It’s not the other people that were hanging out at that pub’s fault. Right after this happened, Midnight started to get worse and worse, and they closed it down to build apartments. It pisses me off because it was such a cool point to meet up if you loved metal and unfortunately, it gave metal a bad reputation. Every time that you talk about the story, it’s like, ‘Oh, they were listening to metal’. Not, ‘They did something absolutely wrong because maybe they were completely drugged out’.”
In 2004, Lacuna Coil played Ozzfest. What is your most vivid memory of that?
“One day I got to meet Ozzy and Sharon backstage. I don’t remember the words [Ozzy said], I remember that we spoke briefly, but I remember Sharon thanking me for being there and I was like, ‘You’re thanking me?’ I actually keep all my old phones, because in one of them there is a picture that I took with Ozzy and Sharon, which probably is so pixelated that you can only see a square and nothing else, but I know that it’s there.”
The festival was pivotal for Lacuna Coil. How did life change afterwards?
“Ozzfest changed everything for us. We got the attention. We got the exposure. Radio started to be interested in us and our name got bigger. Then, because we got more popular in the States, we got more attention in Europe.”
Were you treated as a celebrity in Italy?
“No. To be honest, I don’t think that I’m a celebrity here. I do everything I can to not to be treated like a celebrity. When I was one of the judges on [the Italian version of] The Voice in 2018, that’s when I noticed that being on TV really changes things. I remember a lot of kids and older women coming to our shows and I was just like, ‘Okay, these are coming from the TV.’”
What did you learn from working in TV?
“Fame on TV is very quick and honestly, I didn’t like it. I like my normality. It was cool to bring my world there, and not bring that world in my life.”
When you joined Lacuna Coil you were dating Marco and you stayed together until 2004…
“We were young when we met. Marco was just 18 or 19, and I was a little older than him. But I think that we just developed a relationship of a brother and a sister. I think that the love that we felt for each other just changed. And when I broke up with him, it was difficult at first, because we felt a little bit weird about it, then we talked and worked it out. We built something together. We built one of the most important things in my life; the band.”
Lacuna Coil toured with Motörhead (along with Megadeth and Volbeat) in 2012. What was Lemmy like?
“The first time I met him was so intimidating. I commented on his necklace, and he was just like, ‘Oh, it's from World War Two. I have many other things because I’m a collector. Do you want to see them?’ So we went on the bus and he started to show me clothes, handmade boots and jackets. He was so down to earth. He was the sweetest. I remember that one of the last days of the tour, he asked me to go onstage to sing Killed By Death, and I said no out of respect because I didn’t know the lyrics of the whole song. I felt insecure and I didn’t want to ruin it for them. That will stay with me forever. I should have done it just for the fun of it.”
A few years ago, you lost both of your parents within nine months. How did that affect you?
“My dad died in December 2016. He didn’t feel well in the morning, so we went to the hospital, and then I could tell immediately that there was something wrong, because he was sweating and feeling a lot of pain in his stomach. Everything escalated so quickly, and we were around his bed to say goodbye.
“My mum got sick in 2013. She had cancer, so when my dad died, I don't think my mum realised it. She would see me as a familiar face, like I was another nurse. She would smile at me, but whenever I was talking to her, I don’t think she recognised me as her daughter. We expected her to pass away, but her heart was so strong that it kept on beating. I remember that I had to leave for a tour with Lacuna Coil at the end of the month and I was just like, ‘What am I going to do?’ Because of course, I wanted to stay here. I think that my mum made the last gift by saying goodbye a few days before I left on tour.”
How did you deal with that double loss?
“I wrote [2016’s heavy and tortured] Delirium during this period. I had the chance to be in many places for the cure of mental health and neurological problems, so that definitely influenced the record, for sure.”
At a similar time, you ended your 13-year relationship with Slipknot’s Jim Root. How did you handle being in a high-profile relationship?
“To be fair, it was not a high-profile relationship because we never talked about it. I always try to protect my loved ones. I share a lot on social media, but you barely see my friends. When I go out for dinner with my friends, I don’t post too much about my boyfriend, just because those are moments that are not needed by whoever follows Lacuna Coil.”
Are you sick of being asked the ‘What’s it like to be a woman in metal?’ question in interviews?
“It is a cliché, but there is a reason why it’s a cliché. Honestly, I never encountered problems. I was never treated badly, but you are treated differently. At every gig, or at festivals, the security will think that you’re either the wife or the girlfriend of someone, or a groupie, or a production assistant. A guy can be a rock star just wearing skinny jeans and a jacket. A lady has to prove it. But then many things have happened in which I certainly took advantage of the fact of being a woman. There were some pros to being a female.”
What do you think those pros were?
“The cover of magazines was one. When an editor is just like, ‘OK, we have a cool picture of a pretty woman and we have another picture of a guy with a beard. Let’s be honest. Let’s be real. I think that we got a lot of attention because of having a woman in a band.”
In the 2000s, the press reported that you had a beef with Evanescence’s Amy Lee, but there’s no evidence this actually happened?
“I only saw that in two magazines in Italy. And I was always surprised about this because we’ve never met.”
That's really mad that you’ve never met in all this time.
“Isn’t it weird? And I don’t know why. I was not even pissed, I was heartbroken. I was just like, ‘I don’t even know her. Why would she say something like this? Why would they say something like this?’ I really hope one day we’ll meet to clarify this.”
Would you like to collaborate with Amy?
“Yeah, why not? It would be very unexpected. I would definitely like to meet her.”
Was it irritating, though, when Evanescence emerged in 2003 and hit instant superstardom with Bring Me To Life, given you had been playing gothic metal for years at that point?
“Yeah, that was a little bit like, ‘Hello! We’re over here!’ But we weren’t surprised because realistically, and I'm a very logical person, we were coming from Italy. We were not mother tongue, and we were under an independent label. We had zero chances to have the same exposure. And they had a great song.”
What’s been your biggest challenge of your career so far?
“The hardest thing is the fact that you have to sacrifice so much of your private life. When you’re on tour, things are happening at home and you’re not part of them anymore. People are dying, are getting married, are moving houses, they’re building new things... I’m definitely an extrovert, but sometimes I turn into the biggest misanthrope. When I’m home, I just like to stay home because I’m never home. So for me, I don't want to go out. If we go out, will I be home by 11?”
What has been your favourite of the band’s different eras?
“That’s difficult to answer, because they all made sense. I’m not going to pick only one. The very beginning was something very unexpected; to see ourselves in Germany and touring Europe without even being able to speak English. Then, the Comalies era, because we experimented at the next level. Then I would say Black Anima [2019] and Sleepless Empire [2025], because that’s where I feel most comfortable. Those two records really represent me with the sound and the visuals.”
What impact do you think you had joining Lacuna Coil?
“When we started, there weren’t many females in bands. It wasn’t a thing back then. And the fact that I would also sing in a way that was not operatic [like many other female vocalists in metal at the time] made us different to other bands.”
You’re an enthusiastic gamer and have recorded songs for videogames. What did that mean to you?
“I did many songs; [Start Again] for Diablo 2, [Destroy Something Beautiful] for Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 – Zombies, and most recently, I did a song called Dream Of The Beast on Metal: Hellsinger. It is my two favourite worlds colliding, because I am a nerd and a metalhead.”
Would you like to explore that more?
“Oh, 1000% yes. I even have other types of experiences with videogames. I was a playable character in the official Iron Maiden game, Legacy Of The Beast.
Have you ever played it as yourself?
“Yes, I tried it. My weapon is a Sword of Anger, which is the title of one of our songs. It's perfect."
Lacuna Coil's latest album Sleepless Empire is out now via Century Media. They tour the UK from November 22
