This Cold As Life interview was done about 15 years ago. It was May 9th, 1999, Cold As Life played at the Entrepotdok squat, Amsterdam along with Born From Pain & Comin Correct. I found it in an old stack of interviews I did for the fanzine I was running back then. The new issue of this zine was never finished thus leaving interviews with Cold As Life, Madball, Skarhead, Deviate & Breakdown unpublished. Till now. Of course some questions aren’t really relevant anymore but I wanted to release the interview as it was done originally.
Cold As Life is one of those bands that people have know by name for years, mainly because of mentions in other bands songs and album booklets. However until recently most of us had never heard any of their music. This changed with the release of their “Born To Land Hard” album, followed by a European tour with Born From Pain.
Seeing them play in a small, dark, former factory turned squat, it’s clear: these guys are all about sheer aggression on stage. Afterwards we did an interview with bass player Mike Couls and guitarist Big Dog.
Please introduce yourself and tell us how the Cold As Life story started..
-Mike: I’m Mike, I play bass in Cold As Life. This is ‘the Big Dog’, he plays guiter. Cold As Life started like this; around ’88 or ’89 Jeff (Gunnels, guitar/vocals) and Roy (Bates, drums) jammed together. Rawn Beaty sang and wrote all the lyrics. There were a couple of other guys, but those three were the core of Cold As Life. They tried so many bass-players, most couldn’t last a week! This went on for a while till Rawn died. Jeff then decided to take over the vocals. It took another year for him to become real good and be able to go on stage and play good shows. In ’95 they finally recorded a demo, but after that they kicked out their bass player, because for him it was sex, drugs and rock & roll. In that order, you know what I mean. He also got arrested a couple of times on touro so they were fed up with and kicked him to the curb. Then I started jamming with them and now we’ve also got the Big Dog as the second guitar player, so Jeff can just sing..
You’ve recently appeared on the Victory Records comp “Only The Strong”. Are there plans do more releases with them?
-Big Dog: Maybe just some more compilation tracks or something. We did a few more compilations recently. Like the Warzone tribute and a Sick Of It All cover. So we’ll see.
-Mike: The Victory thing is that they probably just wanted a bit of a different flavor for that comp, because all their own bands have being on their comps a dozen times.
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Cold As Life’s music and lyrics are very dark and aggressive. Can we say that’s an reflection of your daily life?
-Mike: It’s a reflection of reality, it’s a reflection of some of the darker things in life you go through. The songs on the [Born To Land Hard] cd are kinda about the shit in our lives and direct surroundings but the new songs are more about what’s going on in the whole world. You’ll see the change on the next record.
It’s a reflection of reality, it’s a reflection of some of the darker things in life you go through. The songs on the [Born To Land Hard] cd are kinda about the shit in our lives and direct surroundings…
Judging from the lyrics, the song “Promise” must be about the killer of your former singer. Accordings to the lyrics you’re not afraid to take justice in your own hands if/when you find him.
-Mike: We are very firm believers in karma. Karma is basically ‘What goes around comes around’ and it’s just nature, you know. If you do all this fucked up shit it’s bound to get back to you, sooner or later. What you deserve is what you’re gonna get. One way or another.
-Big Dog: On that song we speak on behalf of a lot of people. There are people we know who will probably get very violent with the guy when they see him.
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The cd inlay has a picture of the killer, did you get any reactions to it, clues on his whereabouts?
-Mike: There are a couple of ideas of where he could have went. One of them was Germany, cause he used to hang out with some Nazi boneheads. So he could be in Europe, that was another reason to come tour over here and put the picture in the album. Me, personally, I think that somebody who killed a man like that, I think this [running away] is the easy way out. He also could’ve gone to jail and have all his shit shattered till he dies from a broken ass heart. He was a coward and afraid of Rawn. And believe me, this was the only way he was able to kill Rawn. Just shoot him in his sleep, like a coward bitch.
-Big Dog: Yeah, cause Rawn probably was the toughest, hardest guy I’ve ever met in my life. He was the kind of guy that would walk up to the biggest, scariest son of a bitch that was feared by everybody.. And punch him in the face. You know, he wasn’t scared of anybody.
He also could’ve gone to jail and have all his shit shattered till he dies from a broken ass heart. He was a coward and afraid of Rawn. And believe me, this was the only way he was able to kill Rawn. Just shoot him in his sleep, like a coward bitch.
The name Cold As Life has always been mentioned by bands like Madball & Agnostic Front. Why did it take so long to released “Born To Land Hard”?
-Mike: There was always so much turmoil. Rawn died and it took people a year to get their lives back together. Then it also takes so much time to get your band together and running again. And then half your fucking band leaves again… And so on…
-Big Dog: Right now we’ve got a more serious line-up than ever. The old Cold As Life thing was great, but it was more a fun thing to, just play some shows and fuck around..
-Mike: As for people from Madball, Agnostic Front spreading the word.. It’s great that they’ve always helped us out. Lotsa respect and love to those guys for keeping the name around!
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You’ve released “Born To Land Hard” yourself with the help of +/- Records, are you happy with the way it came out..?
-Mike: It’s actually on CTYC Productions, +/- Records helped us distribute it and Andy [owner of +/-) is a good friend of ours. We’re not entirely happy with the recording. We did it ourselves and we got a bit stressed out in the studio. And now we’ve gotten a lot better. The songs on the album are the last songs Rawn wrote before he died.
-Big Dog: “Born To Land Hard” is basically twelve years of song writing..
-Mike: I hope a new cd will be out before the end of this year. It’s gonna be on CTYC Productions again.
[Cold As Life’s sound] It developed. When Cold As Life started it was like destructo fucking punk-rock. Later on a mix of hardcore & metal really made it work for Cold As Life.
Cold As Life have a very distinctive sound, did you always have this style?
-Mike: It developed. When Cold As Life started it was like destructo fucking punk-rock. And hardcore is basically the development of punk-rock. And bands like Agnostic Front and Cro-Mags mixed that great hardcore sound with metal. And now there are so many styles of hardcore. You’ve got death metal influenced hardcore, hip-hop influenced hardcore.. it’s crazy. But that fucking mix of hardcore & metal really made it work for Cold As Life.
Out of nowhere you guys seem to explode from a virtually unknown band to one that plays big festivals like the legendary Dynamo Fest. Did you ever imagine Cold As Life getting so big?
-Mike: I never thought it would get to this level. But I think people gotta see it to believe it. And that’s why we’re on tour right now. As far as the Dynamo fest goes, we really have to thank Theo & The Noizz (now GSR Music) and Onno Cro-Mag for hooking that up. We’re happy to come over to Europe and see all those different countries and cultures. And if people like us and wanna see us again, we’ll come back. We like it out here. We like the scene, it’s more like one scene. The problem in the general hardcore scenes is that people wanna divide it. And as you know: united we stand, divided we fall.
Any last words..
-Mike: About all the bullshit of our lyrics being too violent.. Like we talked about earlier; I think all your evil deeds will come back to you. Karma. What goes around, comes around. And that’s why we write such lyrics. Furthermore we would like to thank everybody that helped us out on tour and everybody who come to see us.. Thanks!
Afterword
There’s so much history behind Cold As Life, the murder of Rawn and the Detroit scene, that I simply wasn’t aware of at the time of the interview (please keep in mind, that the internet wasn’t widely available yet).
There’s a lot more ground to cover on that subject; so for those interested here are a few links to other blogs / interviews, that provide some more insights.
Interview @ Hardcore Times.
Opinion piece on the Detriot Hardcore scene @ Skinned To The Bone.
And another over @ Shake Your Halo Down.
Furthermore there is an documentary in the works on Cold As Life & Detroit called “A Detroit Story”. A brief description from the makers: “Feature length documentary on Cold As Life and the infamous music scene of Detroit. Set against the back drop of a forgotten and decaying city that once built the worlds most prosperous country, comes the tragic tale of Rawn Beauty and the surviving members of his ill fated band, Cold As Life.
Featuring interviews with – CTYC, Agnostic Front, Sick of it All, Bulldoze, Negative Approach, the Suicide Machines, Earthmover, the Almighty Lumberjacks of Death, Pitbull, Son of Sam/Hillside Stranglers, Heresy, xTYRANTx, Lars Fredrickson and more..”. Read more about it here.
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