Album Review: Cold - The Things We Can't Stop

We currently live in a time of nostalgia. It seems that everywhere you look, in every medium, the dominant theme is a regurgitation of the past. We are constantly looking for the next reminder of a time before we weren't mentally fried just getting through each day. We've reached the point where just about anything that can be brought back to life, or rebooted, is waiting in the pipeline, if it hasn't already been given to us. That includes our little musical world, where bands that no one missed are coming back in an almost constant stream, not letting the future develop. There's an invisible hand pulling us back, not letting us remember that the past sucked just as much as today does.

With that being said, welcome back Cold, the 90s/00s rock band that no one remembers, and no one wanted to crawl out from under whatever rock they have been under. Add this to the fact that Puddle Of Mudd's career has received an injection of Narcan, and it's getting a bit claustrophobic in here. As bad as mainstream rock is now, all our problems started with the era that Cold came from, so forgive me if I don't give a damn that they're back together.

The pretentious SW gives unto us a record that doesn't remind us as much of the 'classic' Cold sound as I assumed, but instead gives us a drum-heavy production that has absolutely no energy to it whatsoever. I suppose this still qualifies as a rock record, but it's extremely turgid and dour, what the Gin Blossoms "New Miserable Experience" would have been, if they weren't being facetious. I've said this before, but while it's a good thing that artists have an outlet for their pain, there's a lot of that stuff I don't want to hear, and I don't want to let into my own life. This Cold record fits that bill.

I couldn't stop myself from laughing when the press release talks about the "uplifting spirit" of the music. That would be one of the very last things I would ever say about these songs. My mood got worse and worse as it played. Come to think of it, maybe that meant SW's spirit would be lifted by making the rest of us feel terrible. Schaudenfraude, anyone?

Cold falls into the same category as several other records recently; they aren't a damn bit of fun to listen to. Tool's record is a drawn-out, ambient, tuneless wreck. Taylor Swift's album was pop music so somber it played into her image as an ice-queen. Cold is also... cold, but in an even weirder way. What is rock music if it doesn't rock? The answer is Cold, apparently. Yes, there are guitars scattered throughout this record, but they serve as washes of noise in the background. They never add any energy, or riffs, or anything that couldn't be achieved with a synth-pad. That's what my problem is here, more than anything. This is 'rock' music that sounds to me like it was written as electronic/synth music, and only given a bit of rock gloss in the studio for the sake of sounding more like the band's old days.

So there's the skinny on Cold; "The Things We Can't Stop" is slow, depressing, and a perfect illustration that nostalgia is a fool's vision. Since I have none for Cold, I can see them clearly, and what I see isn't pretty.