Cold Years: Home Is Where Your Hate Is

As Ross Gordon and his COLD YEARS bandmates strolled down a beach in their hometown of Aberdeen, they were interrupted. Caught in the midst of recording a music video, they can hear through the cool breeze words of disdain from a passer by. Ross recalls it well. “Some boomer arsehole started shouting ‘oh look it’s a fucking boyband’ and I was like – so what? We’re from the same place you’re from but we’re actually trying to do something with our lives.” In isolation, you take that incident as a bad 20 seconds and move on, but the North East of Scotland has been giving COLD YEARS the proverbial middle finger for over a decade now.

It’s this distaste for their surroundings which has proved to be the backbone of COLD YEARS‘ inspiration: a desire to break out. As vocalist, of course, Ross is central to lyrical output, and story telling. He takes a second to think before rattling off where his dislike of home began. “It started when I was 15/16 I think,” he says. “Realising the only fucking career path I had was oil and gas which is killing the planet was one of the things. I worked in that industry for a while and I hated it and rejected it.”

There’s more to it than that though. The story of someone hating their job and longing for more is commonplace. Gordon had to fast forward further down the line to find his real breaking point. “I think for me the biggest thing was: I was in a shit relationship, a really really bad one. And I suddenly woke up in a shit relationship, with a government I didn’t want, and in a place I didn’t want to be in. There was no real other way out because the government’s not investing in anything else other than oil and gas here. There was that moment of clarity where you go: You know what? Everything in my life is so shit, and I don’t want this any more.”

Life has a funny way of working itself out. Up to this point, COLD YEARS had more than managed to get by. There was obviously something there, 2016’s Death Chasers EP confirmed their potential – but you still couldn’t get rid of the scent that the puzzle was missing some vital pieces. As it turns out: those pieces lay in the hands of three drastic events: Brexit, a majority Conservative government, and Ross Gordon‘s growing displeasure of the life he found himself in.

“I got married and divorced at a young age because I was put in a place that I didn’t wanna be in by people I didn’t wanna know. They set this kind of idea: ‘this is what you should do with your life’. I ran away from all of it, I thought: screw this, I wanna hit reset, I wanna start again. When you have that epitome moment of like, it’s massively important. This record [Paradise] for me was a huge thing, because it was finally us not being scared about who we want to be.

Ross is constantly grounded. He’s aware that there’s sections of society which will quite simply not understand Paradise‘s viewpoint of angst. Whether that really matters or not is a different question. Truth is: there’s so much spring in the records melodic step – the subject matter becomes almost less important. Even with that said though, of course, COLD YEARS want you to find solace, and familiarity in their story, but they don’t treat it like it’s the be all, and end all.

Perhaps most fascinating about the Paradise backstory, is that it almost didn’t even exist. Prior to a chance tour with THE LOVED ONES vocalist Dave Hause, the debut COLD YEARS record was written, but was nothing like the portrait of disdain you hear on Paradise. Instead, the album was set to focus around the dangers of love, drugs, and alcohol. It wasn’t set to be a disaster by any means, but as Ross describes, it wasn’t going to cut it for what the quartet really wanted to say.

“We had a record written that was really bland. It was very: ‘oh, how shit are relationships, how shit is drugs, how shit is drinking. And that tour taught me: don’t be scared of expressing how you feel. If you’re a real writer, you’ll express it regardless of how it makes other people feel, or how many people it pisses off. As long as you’re honest to yourself, and to the art that you’re creating, that’s all that matters. To have that ability to not be scared any more was huge.”

In essence, you can’t get more punk rock than that, can you? Above all else, Paradise is bold, and doesn’t care what you think. 62 is dedicated to the 62% of Scotland that voted to remain in the European Union, Dropout highlights issues in education, Northern Blues depicts hatred of the band’s local conventions. It’s all stuff people in swathes could, and do disagree with – but COLD YEARS couldn’t care less. “There’s never been a better time to write punk rock,” Ross says. “Punk rock isn’t a genre, punk rock is an attitude.”

Attitude is an appropriate way to sum up this new, vibrant, creative path COLD YEARS are on. It’s not just about writing hook laden choruses any more. The four piece have evolved into a band that want to let you know what they love, and even more so, what they want to change. And since there’s plenty to love and hate in Aberdeen – maybe it’s the perfect place for the band to have originated from. More certain than that though, is that British punk rock is safe in the hands of Ross Gordon and co – and if you find the throes of working class life often morose, Paradise could be your soundtrack to repatriation.

Paradise is out now via eOne. 

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