As the monolithic behemoth of a tour featuring Slipknot, Korn and King 810 strides across Europe at this moment, Cold Snap’s new album World War 3 (Eclipse) seems the perfect accompaniment. If you played this album to anyone in that crowd they would think, wow 2002 will indeed live forever.
Cold Snap is an amalgamation of everyone who seemed to be big at the time of the Japan/South Korea World Cup. It has the rhythm section and drum sound of White Pony (Maverick) era Deftones, the vocals of Corey Taylor circa self-titled Slipknot album (Roadrunner), and the overall industrial aggression of Obsolete (Roadrunner) era Fear Factory (in a time before they were).
At first the sound does have hints of the recent Djent sound, but then when the chundering riffs kick in you realise that this is indeed paying homage to Burton C. Bell and co rather than doing directly for the more current range of bands they could have taken influence from; if you listen to ‘Only One’ or ‘Me Inside’ you’ve pretty much heard the tracks on here.
If you liked balls to the wall Nu Metal without some of the despicable rapping then this maybe for you. There are plenty of downtuned moments dispersed in between the barrage of Dino Cazares off cuts that make up the majority of the album. You could never criticise the album for lacking punch or aggression, but there is a quarrel with the album lacking originality. This is a record whose influences all cut off around the same time people started to buy clothes that weren’t four sizes too big for them.
Overall, as a fan of the genre, World War 3 is an enjoyable listen but it doesn’t progress any further than being a massive nostalgia trip. If you at any stage wore a baseball cap and some shorts big enough to catch basketballs in them then this album will certainly take you back to that time, the only problem is that the original albums will already do that for you and are of incredibly better quality.
6.0/10
DAN O’BRIEN