At first glance, Cold is your basic cookie-cutter rock band, with a blast of grunge-influenced alt metal, perfect for modern rock stations to play endlessly. However, their music goes beyond that. Year of the Spider is by far, the most solid, and most well done album Cold has ever made. It features a large range of melodic metal, with fresh, catchy guitar riffs as well as Scooter's signature vocals. His vocals are one of the best elements of this album. Sure, it may sound generic in the field of grunge, and sure, we may call it a Maynard James Keenan ripoff, but in that sense, which post-grunge band vocalist isn't? Ward's vocals has improved dramatically in comparison to 13 Ways to Bleed on stage, where he showed a brutal, gruff style of singing which favored heaviness over melody. This album does quite the opposite, by featuring many of the catchiest songs you will have heard from that year. From a basic grunge/hard rock song like Remedy, to an emotional acoustic ballad such as Wasted Years, to even Kill the Music Industry, a post-punk song that revives Cold's past, this is truly an album to be appreciated.
2 Bumps | Bump |
