Review Summary: The album is built better than Year of the Spider, but sometimes it's experimentation doesn't quite prevail.
Year of the Spider was the first album I listened to from these guys and I thought it was excellent. With better track arrangement, it would have been pushed over-the-top. There are a ton of 5-star tracks throughout and, thankfully, this album is no different. Here we have Cold making a record that is
definitely not aimed towards commercial markets like their later effort was. The experimentation mixed throughout the CD often works, but sometimes it misfires.
"Just Got Wicked" is a track that may take a while to get used to, but it's worth the wait because it packs a powerful punch. It's an amazing song that blends eerie vocals with outstanding guitar sections, drumming, and the likes. Packing the goods early on for a great album, the opener is followed by two tracks that work just fine. The album as a whole is arranged quite well (unlike
Year of the Spider), it dips in-and-out of quality quite nicely, never too abrupt. One thing that's easily recognizable about this album is that it's really slow-paced, which some may describe as
repetitious at times.
"No One" is definitely a weaker track than the previous two, not offering up enough to differentiate itself from the previous two tracks. One notable part arises just before the final chorus where Scooter switches up his voice a bit, it's an interesting twist that keeps you interested, but a part of you may wish that it was set before every chorus in order to have made things much more interesting. Coming in later-on, "It's All Good" suffers this same fate as well as "No One". The track does feature some of the better writing on the album too, but it's ruined by the horrible chorus that literally repeats
"Well it was all good" until you can no longer tolerate it and the suffering is finally over.
Fixing things up a bit is my favourite song on the album, "Send in the Clowns". It uses the word
"cold" throughout to great effect and when it finally reveals the title of the track, it ends up being an incredible build to it's finale. This is great stuff, too bad it's followed by the very sluggish "Same Drug" that follows "It's All Good"'s lame pattern (except it doesn't have the strong writing that it
partially featured). "Sick of Man" is another song that doesn't quite work because of it's bleak lyrics and Scooter's somewhat uninvested performance, "Confession" is a much better track than this (and it deals with similar themes as well).
All-in-all, the album is built better than
Year of the Spider, but sometimes it's experimentation doesn't quite prevail. Songs like "No One", "It's All Good", "Outerspace" and "Same Drug" drag the album down a bit. However, there is a decent helping of strong tracks served throughout. Sometimes there's not enough, though. "Bleed" is a beautiful acoustic ballad, and proof that these guys have what it takes to make both simple and heavy tracks with powerhouse melodies to boot. Expect this album to grow on you the more you hear it, but the best songs on here are "Just Got Wicked", "Confession", "Send in the Clowns" and "Bleed".
