1987-Scooter WardVocals
Terry BalsamoGuitar
Jeremy MarshallBass
Kelly HayesGuitar
Sam McCandlessDrums
Matt LaughrenGuitar
The band was originally called Grundig. They changed it after a German stereo manufacturer with that name threatened to sue. They got their new name when Wes Borland was giving his opinion of the lawsuit. His comment: "That's cold."
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Suggestion credit:
Karin - Wooster, OH
Before the burdens of working in the music industry set in, they cultivated an image as a hard-partying band that loved their fun. They cited their favorite movie as Half Baked.
Scooter Ward is the primary songwriter and the only member that has been part of every lineup. In the time after their 2011 album Superfiction, it wasn't always clear who was in the band and who wasn't. Their 2019 release The Things We Can't Stop has contributions from guitarist Nick Coyle, bass player Lindsay Manfredi, and drummer Aaron Fulton.
Early on, they described their style as "redneck goth," but later went with the more refined term "active rock."
They formed in Jacksonville, Florida and came together because of a mutual love for skateboarding. The music scene in that city was a little stale, so they moved to Atlanta, but couldn't get much traction there. When Ward was diagnosed with Crohn's disease, the band moved back to Jacksonville, where the nu-metal scene was emerging, led by Limp Bizkit. That group's frontman, Fred Durst, signed Cold to his label, Flip Records, which released their self-titled debut album in 1997.
The band took a break in 2003 when Ward entered rehab. Addiction is an overarching theme in his songwriting, as it was such a powerful force in his life. He told Songfacts: "Everyone around me was an addict. It was a crazy situation, and I put myself in those situations. Even when I was out of it, when I felt better, I still put myself in there trying to help people."
They toured with Weezer for a while in 2001, which was a difficult pairing, as Weezer fans didn't take to Cold. At one show, Ward told them off, which led to Weezer fans showing up early to boo Cold. Weezer frontman Rivers Cuomo is a fan, and appeared on the song "
Stupid Girl" from Cold's 2003 album
Year Of The Spider.
Hayes "auditioned" his way into the band by taking them all to a strip club. He was in without playing a note.
Guitarist Balsamo was not originally in the band. He was added to make the second album sound heavier.
The band called it quits in 2006 when their album A Different Kind Of Pain underperformed. By this time, some band members, including Ward, had families and were burned out from the grind. A few years later, they re-formed, and in 2011 issued their album Superfiction, which as the title suggests, has lyrics that are more fictional in nature, as Ward chose to couch his personal traumas in stories instead of laying them bare.
Balsamo joined Evanescence in 2004 when their guitarist, Ben Moody, left the band. Evanescence lead singer Amy Lee took some heat when she suggested that Cold would be breaking up. They weren't, and Cold didn't appreciate it.
Ward has a history of "sitting around wallowing in a bunch of misery that I created," which can lead to depression and creative paralysis. Making music is how he copes with these dark thoughts, but when he was working on the band's 2019 album
The Things We Can't Stop, the music left him for the first time in his life when he got writer's block.
The cure was repeated viewings of the Nick Cave documentary
One More Time With Feeling, where Cave copes with the death of his son. "It was life-changing for me,"
Ward said in a Songfacts interview. "The whole thing was just so beautiful to me and inspiring, just the dedication that he had. It pushed me to where I was like, 'What the f--k am I doing?' I'm sitting around here and this guy is going through all that and still making it happen."