Reviews of "The Great Depression"

[coldcolours]

good or bad, let's hear 'em!

here are a few good ones so far:

Metal Temple webzine:
When I have the chance to listen to a Metal band that hasn’t been really fixing itself on a particular Metal subgenre, it usually ends up as a pleasurable experience. Although I am an old school fan and the traditional sides of Metal typically inspire me more, I still have some of my heart set on different variations of Metal or Rock. COLD COLOURS, a modern US Metal band, showed me another shining light in the outskirts of what is called Dark or Gothic Metal for that matter. “The Great Depression”, the band’s third official release, bearing a title that would pretty much pave a way to the idea of what is inside, is an interesting piece of Metal music.

Through the tenure of more than fifteen years, COLD COLOURS has been crossing between Metal subgenres, whether dark, traditional, extreme and progressive. Even though I haven’t had the chance on listening to their earlier releases, I conjured that “The Great Depression” is more than reasonable turnout of this venture’s earlier endeavours. The rhythms shifted from what was seemed to be in the veins of NEVERMORE, ICED EARTH and later PARADISE LOST to the likes of early SENTENCED, HYPOCRISY, KATATONIA and early MOONSPELL. With the mixing of those veins reached to higher levels throughout the album, those were the moments that I truly enjoyed more. I liked the means of turning pure aggression into something deeper than a murderous imagery. I believe that “The Great Depression”, with its themes, impressive sound production and direction, is the finer example of this line of music.

After a rather solid entranced with “Deny, Embrace, Define”, where I was able to discover the amazing vocal talents, both growl and clean, of this project’s ongoing leader, Brian J. Huebner, the real gloomy fun began to send its sparks. “Desire (The Fallen WIll)”shattered my mind waves with its awesome glory. NEVERMORE has never sounded so extreme until I heard COLD COLOURS with this track. “Daylight”, was the lesser extreme example of this release. It had that same catchiness that served PARADISE LOST, in their later periods, so well. The track fast flew by while delivering great riffages and incredible lead section. The closing “Lost Inside” was my preferred of them all. It had the fine tools to show darkened progressiveness as something enchanting and impressive. KATATONIA’s harsh atmosphere and ICED EARTH’s attacking and melodic riffages seemed to embrace well in the spirit of COLD COLOURS. It was a true glorious moment. The strapping growls of Huebneralong with the clean vocal work on this track took me into various of emotional boundaries that left me dazzled.

As I mentioned, I haven’t listened to the band’s earlier release but I am sure that there is beyond “The Great Depression”. It is a wonderful release and Sleaszy Rider Records should be swollen with pride on having such as great group in their roster. If the release could be a bit longer than the overall thirty something minutes, it would have been way better for me and probably for you guys as well. 8 out of 10


Behind the Veil Webzine:
The cover artwork of this release impressed me and motivated me to listen to their music. You see it is rare in our days to see a cover that is not made with the use of computer, but what's even more important is that the cover brought to my mind the cover of two other great releases, the one is KING DIAMOND’s “Voodoo” and SAVATAGE’s “Poets and Madmen”. You might find this motivation a bit funny, but it helped me to discover a band that has something to say musically in the contemporary metal scene. In my opinion COLD COLOURS belong to what we say dark power/thrash metal, although some of you might not feel comfortable with the use of both harsh and clean vocals. Personally, I loved it! First of all COLD COLOURS carry, in their sound, influences from the good old ICED EARTH, some bits of the late DEATH releases and of course in their melodic death parts they will bring to your mind the aggression and despair of DARK TRANQUILLITY. There are also some melodies and parts that made me think of BLIND GUARDIAN like in the song "Days of Fire". As you can see and read COLD COLOURS have a variety of influences, but all these are given under the personal prism of the musicians that are members of the band. Actually it is easy to understand when a band copies and when a band plays with their soul the music they love and COLD COLOURS are a band that play with soul. I don’t know if my review will motivate you to listen to the third official release of COLD COLOURS, but I will definitely keep on listening to them since I hadn't listened to such a good U.S. power/thrash metal release in a long time… 8 out of 10

 

[coldcolours]

and some not so good ones!


POWER OF METAL
Already the band's 6th release and the first that has caught my attention. 3 EP's and now their 3rd full length, although I know EP's that are longer. This band from Minneapolis, USA has one main man and that is Brian Huebner on vocals, guitar and keyboard. He is the only original member left. Since 1998 the band wore out 18 members and I don't know if that says something about Brian or the music. Lucky for him he found Jamie Strobach (drums), Tom Brown (bass) and Chuck Wagner (guitar) to help him out with this new record.

The intentions are there, but it doesn't make me very happy. The vocals are a combination of aggressive and clean ones. Both are not very convincing, especially the clean make my toes curl at times. The band tries to sound like Nevermore a couple of times, especially in the clean singing parts, but they are far, far away from that high level. Several influences from different styles can be heard in the song, a little bit of death, some power metal, a slice of gothic and a progressive touch. If done right and packed in well arranged songs, this can be a good combination, but not on this album. The vocals are not good enough for that and it all sounds too forced. The production isn't that good either and all those minuses are a little too much. Sometimes they are on the right track; the best song is without a doubt "Lost Inside". If they can write an album with songs in that style, it would be a lot better, in that track all the elements and styles make sense.

Next time a complete album with only good songs please.
63 out of 100

Zware Metalen.com
Het Griekse Sleaszy Rider Records is zowat het enige Griekse bedrijf dat ik de huidige crisis wil helpen overleven. Niet alleen is dit een fijn label, het is ook een meer dan prima distro. Ze brengen ook albums uit, zoals dit Amerikaanse Cold Colours. Dit is hun derde plaat.

Cold Colours heeft affiniteit met "dark" metal uit de jaren negentig, zoals The Blood Divine en Sundown. Het niveau ligt alleen een pak lager en is bijlange na niet zo geïnspireerd. De lat ligt laag al kun je even goed spreken dat men zich niet overschat. Geen echte versnellingen, geen markante solo's, geen uitzonderlijke gitaarpartijen, niet bijzonder catchy, matig gevarieerd in het vocale compartiment... er wordt weinig geboden. Lichte gevoelens van nostalgie naar de typische Nuclear Blast-/gothic/dark metal-platen van rond het jaar '95, die krijg je er gratis bij.

Heel erg basic "dark" metal dus, met een stereotype uitvoering. Er zijn zeker liefhebbers voor te vinden, in geringe mate. Sleaszy Rider heeft beters in zijn catalogus zitten.
63 out of 100

 

[MetalNations]

http://www.metal-rules.com/review/viewreview.php?month=November&year=2011&pos=5
Rating: 3.0/5
Reviewer: Waspman

Beginning as a side project of band leader Brian Huebner, Minnesota’s Cold Colours started life 16 years ago in 1995. Aside from the requisite touring & playing live, the band’s managed to release two full-length albums and three EPs – none of which I’ve heard.



The band claims influences ranging from Paradise Lost to Sentenced, and has an album cover that calls to mind Swallow the Sun, so I had no idea what to expect when I first put on this album. As it happens, opener “Deny, Embrace, Define” is a perfect encapsulation of the band’s sound, which is somewhat heavy gothic metal that leans towards death metal, both in terms of riffs and the mixed clean/growled vocals. You certainly can pick up the Sentenced-influence, as THE GREAT DEPRESSION almost sounds like a demo-album that the Finns might have made between AMOK and DOWN, before they decided to abandon their death roots entirely. Unfortunately Cold Colours’ music doesn’t bring across the power or conviction that was evident on those seminal albums. I do not doubt that the band believes strongly in what they’re doing, but something is lost in the translation.



Perhaps part of the problem is vocals. Both styles, growled and clean, are passable but not particularly powerful either way. While the music definitely has its moments, the just don’t project. An example of this would be in the otherwise musically excellent “Daylight”; the chorus switches off between growls and clean vocals and it works well in concept, but the high notes called for are not convincingly delivered. Yet, in the very next song (“Days of Ire”), the more gruff clean vocals work well.



All told, THE GREAT DEPRESSION is a decent release from a decent band. At this point, Cold Colours shows flashes of greatness, but to my ears, seem to be missing that extra something to make them special.

 

[coldcolours]

I am slowly becoming a fan of black metal. I haven’t yet fully embraced the “straight to hell” sounds of true black metal, I prefer the band that incorporate large elements of atmosphere and doom. One band that’s been contributing considerably to my enjoyment is Minnesota-based Cold Colours, who have just released their latest album, The Great Depression. Cold Colours has been around for a while and have numerous releases under their belt. Overall, they blend elements of Opeth, Nevermore, and maybe even a little Katatonia. The Great Depression is probably their most diverse sounding release to date. The band is branching out from their melodic black roots and incorporating more clean vocals and atmospheric clean guitars into their sound. I like this diversification.

The cd is full of great songs. “Deny, Embrace, Define”, “Daylight” and “Lost Inside” are the highlights for me. The band has also rerecorded and breathed new life into some of their older songs, giving them a much higher production value than they received the first time they came out. While there are a lot of great songs and the production is far superior to their older releases, there is an inconsistent vocal performance. At times the vocals, whether they are clean or aggressive, come out lackluster. The growls are not as throaty and the clean vocals are a little flat.

While I think that The Great Depression could benefit from a stronger vocal performance, it isn’t bad cd by any measure. With a title like this, it is a decent listen while I drive around on rainy fall nights.

3.75 out of 5

 

[coldcolours]

how bout some folk who HATE it!


METAL CURSE
If Cold Colours just stuck to playing Thrash and didn’t attempt all this Gothic sounding shit, and then wrote lyrics that didn’t sound like a whiney sixteen year-old Emo kid after failing (yet again…) to kill himself while listening to Marilyn Manson, The Great Depression might actually be a listenable album. Seriously, when I was playing this, I imagined a bunch of mascara-encrusted eunuchs trying to emulate Evanescence, but without the benefit of a hot chick singer. The “melodic” vocals and the lyrics are cringe-inducing. If you’re going to dwell on depression, this is not the way to do it. If you want depressing music, try playing something slower - like Doom. Aggressive music, like Thrash, doesn’t mesh well with this whiney, Emo shit and the blending of the two is an abomination. The straight-out Thrash parts on this album are fairly well executed (if generic), but those fleeting moments of decent music are soon deluged in the vile, Emo-infested crap that weighs this album down like the albatross around the ancient mariner’s neck. The marketing on this album said “For fans of Opeth, Iced Earth, Katatonia, Nevermore, Amorphis!” but Cold Colours is nowhere near the caliber of any of these bands - and this is their sixth release! Who the fuck is buying this crap? Do you get a free copy of this album with every purchase of a Twilight t-shirt at Hot Topic? Of course, the marketing also referred to Cold Colours as “Dark Metal,” so I get the feeling that the person who wrote this desperate attempt to polish a steaming pile of elephant feces was either listening to a different album or he was legally deaf. And that excellent cover art this CD is supposed to have? It looks like a shack in the woods with a sign on it saying that the place was condemned. If you were searching for something that represents economic hardship, there are places in Detroit that look more hopeless and bleak than this does - and they’re real! This is everything bad about Emo/Goth mixed with the most generic of Thrash Metal, resulting in a guarantee that anyone purchasing this will get tortured for eternity by Paul Baloff in an entirely new layer of Hell set up just for them.
Rating: 1


REVIEW BUSTERS
Am I supposed to get excited over the third release from Cold Colours? I didn’t think so. The Great Depression is just so damn boring to listen to and it makes my ears scream. This is one album that just does not help the metal scene.

If you haven’t heard of Cold Colours then that is a good thing. If you have heard of them or are interested then you are about to get pretty disappointed. Cold Colours, or maybe I should just say Brian Huebner, has been called so many different kinds of metal from gothic to progressive to doom. Either way you label this music it is still crap.

I first heard about Cold Colours when I found their debut album, Somnium XIII, at a garage sale. I was pretty pissed off paying a dollar for that album and after 12 years I am still pretty pissed off with Cold Colours. I really don’t like the screaming vocals that take over the record, but at random points in songs we get your typical, normal vocals. Trust me the understandable vocals are nothing you’d want to cash into a bank. They fall flat real fast, right from the opening track, Deny, Embrace, Define.

Overall I thought the instrumentation was just as bad as the vocals. Most of the time the guitar solos doesn’t really match the sound in the song and the drumming is way too basic. Not only is the drumming basic sounding it sounds like the same damn thing on the entire album. Nice job.

Final Verdict
I’m not even going to waste too much more time with this release from Cold Colours. I don’t know what I was expecting here, maybe something at least better than what I got. At least I can now completely forget about this band, but then again it takes 6 years in-between releases, I may end up fucking up again and listening to the next Cold Colours album. Hopefully that day won’t ever happen.

Rating
3 out of 10