Album Review: Cold Years - Goodbye To Misery

Last year, Rise Against made my Top Ten with "Nowhere Generation", and the year before, Spanish Love Songs made the list with "Brave Faces Everyone". They were both strident punk/alternative/emo albums with plenty of seething anger, and a cynical look at a world that is failing us at every turn. So what happens when an album comes out this year that has many sonic qualities in common with those records? That's a trick question. Merely sounding like something else has never been enough to mean anything to me, but what it does is open the door and give me reason to look under the hood to see if this new entry can fill that same role.

Right off the bat, Cold Years has in common with those other albums plenty of down-stroke punk attitude, a production that lets the guitars ring out with something I call 'pretty distortion', and vocals that blend just a bit of screaming attitude into the mix of their huge melodies. If you don't know the two bands I've mentioned already, I've got a few more comparisons to make.

Throughout the record, there are moments in these songs where Green Day's "Warning" is evoked, but again, with a darker and angrier bent to them. Cold Years are not just taking alternative and punk, but also pop-punk and even power-pop, to blend into their own brand. That Green Day record wasn't successful, but I have always maintained it is my favorite of their work, and it was an approach that would have made the next decade of pop-punk far more enjoyable than it was.

Opener "32" is the strongest connection to Spanish Love Songs, where not only do the opening heavy guitar chords sounds straight off "Brave Faces Everyone", but the hopeless resignation in the lyrics is just as fitting. Talking about getting hit in the head with a baseball bat not making any difference to how you feel sums up the attitude of an entire generation, which the band dubs "generation fuck it all". The world may be burning down, but this song is a rousing number to sing around the fire. Rather than the old Coca-Cola hand-holding sing-along, this one is more the coke-fueled call to arms. That sounds weird, I know, but it works.

The key to the album is the band's expert use of backing vocals, which are usually subtle, but add incredible depth to the choruses. Sometimes you don't even notice, but the vocals sound massive when the songs kick into their high gear. The energy is infectious, and the melodies are sold harder due to the layering. It's much like how a highlighter makes a line stand out on a page, even if in certain lights you could easily miss the effect on first glance.

There's a great line in "Home" about how "home is where the heart is, so I packed up and moved on". It's a simple statement that resonates with what we are seeing in the world, where geography is now becoming an illustration of your values, and merely being from somewhere can taint the way people see you. We face the question whether it is better to love where you are, or be where you love. I'm not professing to answer that question, and I'm not saying the band was going quite that far into philosophy. But if we want to think deeper, the chance is there in this song, and it's a refreshing quality.

We don't have to burden our brains with so much thinking, however. We can listen to "Say Goodbye", hear the echoes of "Warning" in the way the melodies fall against the guitars, and get swept up in the music. This record doesn't falter, delivering a dozen songs that all hit their marks. It won't make the same noise Spanish Love Songs did, but that's because this record isn't as bleak (which is something critics seem to love - maybe we're destined to be depressed) an experience. Cold Years have anger and cynicism behind their sound, but they try to have fun as we fall through the cracks.

It's another year, and there's another great album in this very particular mold. "Goodbye To Misery" is a gem.