Is it a hit, *hit or miss?

Cold - Year Of The Spider by Dan Grote

Cold - Year Of The Spider
Label: Flip/Geffen Records
Rating: 

Cold are just one of those bands that have no reason to exist. The band makes the same cookie-cutter woe-is-me music that has suffocated modern rock radio since 1998. Despite the fact that, in an era in which said genre is petering out, with poor sales showings by former industry leaders such as Korn and Papa Roach, Cold continue to press on with their depression-lite.

Song after song on Year of the Spider, the band�s sophomore disc, lead singer Scooter Ward goes back to the pain well, with song titles like �Suffocate� and �Cure My Tragedy� and anti-conformist refrains like �I Don�t Want Your Remedy.�

The laughable part is that the album ends with a song called �Kill the f***ing Music Industry,� an over-the-top complaint letter about how The Big Five control how people think, featuring the refrain of �Sick of all this monotony.� Meanwhile, anyone with an ear can name five bands that released similar sounding fourth-hand grunge albums this year alone (Cinder, Social Burn, Outspoken, to name a few).

Of course, when it comes time to actually push the album on an unsuspecting public, every band needs a quasi-distinguishing single. And so when said time came for Cold, the band turned not to Scooter�s own songwriting prowess but instead to Rivers Cuomo, the contemporary bastard child of Brian Wilson and Elvis Costello. �Stupid Girl,� with its bouncing lyrics and carefully metered singing, is as different as Cold get on Year of the Spider, but by the same token, because the band went to outside sources for inspiration, perhaps this is proof that anybody could have sang that song, including Cuomo himself, who was probably just doing Fred Durst a favor anyway.

VERDICT: Year of the Spider is staler than day-old doughnuts and only a third as tasty. It�s hard to understand why nu-metal whinalong clones are popping up like the hydra in a year in which the genre is obviously on its way out if not one more album (Come on Staind, tank already) away from being dead.