Cold Heats Up Orlando With Anniversary Tour

2025-04-27

Orlando, FL – Playing an album front to back is a bold move for a band, let alone two in one night. It demonstrates conviction in the music and a confidence fans will show up to hear albums released decades in the past.

Both proved true when Cold performed A Different Kind of Pain and 13 Ways to Bleed Onstage in their entirety at The Social in Orlando on April 24.

Cold at The Social in Orlando, FL on April 24, 2025. Photos by Kyle Martin.

The setlist started with A Different Kind of Pain. This album marked a departure from the aggressive sound of their first three albums when it released in 2005, bringing the same angst but not the familiar bite of prior records.

While it divided fans and critics at the time, it’s proven its longevity with millions of streams. Another measure would be watching the crowd flawlessly sing along every word on tracks like “Happens All the Time,” “When Angels Fly Away,” and title track “A Different Kind of Pain.”

Pain has always been the thesis of Cold’s music, but this album in particular is deeply vulnerable and it’s that shared pain that connects with listeners. Watching the crowd I saw more than a few eyes wiped as Scooter Ward belted out lines like “Does an angel hold a sign with directions for everyone? Is there someone there to have and hold for me?”

With two albums to get through there was not a lot of banter in between songs. But Scooter took the time to share the origins of several songs, recounting an abandoned suicide attempt, his sister’s battle with cancer, a failed relationship and recording in a haunted studio.

Sometimes an album comes along at just the right time and forms the soundtrack of a specific period in your life. I picked up 13 Ways to Bleed Onstage right around my freshman year of college, a period when I was thousands of miles from home and going through a breakup. And while I might not listen to it often today, every song takes me back to sleepless nights, lying in bed at 2 am and figuring out life.

A full 25 years later (yikes!) the album clearly resonates with others as much as me, judging by the cheers that greeted the drum intro of “Just Got Wicked.” Musically, 13 Ways is rich and textured, crafting big sonic landscapes with crashing drums and heavy reverb on the vocals. Scooter shared that some of the songs were leftovers from their debut self-titled album (which I highly recommend), while others were written in the Seattle studio where they recorded.

While years past the heyday of grunge, you can still hear its echoes in the soft verse/loud chorus structure of most of the songs. “No One” was the single that rocketed Cold to fame in the early aughts and it proved just as powerful live.

Unexpectedly the song that stuck in my head long after the show was “Confession.” Most of these songs I’ve listened to so many times the words have lost their meaning, so hearing them live gave them new life. Scooter wrote the song after a friend’s suicide, and the story behind it will shape the way I hear it moving forward.

The brooding “Sick of Man” is my favorite track on 13 Ways, a simple but dark journey through themes of loss. It seems criminal to get this far before praising the rest of the band, but they really shined on this track. Both drums and bass — that’s Tony Kruszka and Lindsay Manfredi, respectively — take Cold’s songs in surprising directions with complex patterns and rhythms that drive the music forward. The twin guitar attacks of Ed Cuozzo and Angelo Maruzzelli add both walls of distortion and delicate texture to the mix.

For the closing number Scooter took center stage and performed “Bleed” on guitar with only Angelo providing back up vocals. Lit only by cellphone lights, Scooter sang to the heart of what everyone in the crowd was thinking: “I need music, to set me free, to let me bleed.”

Setlist
A Different Kind of Pain