For over three decades, the name Cold as Life has been synonymous with hardcore's dangerous underbelly. When someone asks, "Who's the scariest hardcore band?" Cold as Life is the go-to answer.
Their monumentally heavy sound and authentically gritty street tales are revered, but it's the reputation of the larger-than-life Detroit maniacs who made the music that still gets whispered about in the backs of venues.
In their most active years during the Nineties and early 2000s, Cold as Life were a force of chaos: Cinematic fights at shows, heavy substance abuse, criminal activity, volatile personalities, and members who paid the price of danger with their lives are all part of the Cold as Life mythos.
While the savage bounce of 1998's Born to Land Hard still resonates with today's mosh warriors, it's almost impossible to imagine a band of their caliber — infamously dangerous yet regionally beloved; commercially ripe (in the same way Nineties gangster rap achieved voyeuristic appreciation from suburban outsiders) yet ardently DIY; immensely talented but chronically burdened by the self-sabotage and violence of their personal lives — existing in the TikTok age of hardcore.
But now, Cold as Life are back, and they want to leave all the craziness behind. On Saturday October 7th, the band will take the stage for the first time in over 20 years with co-founder Jeff Gunnells on the mic.
The singer and primary songwriter recently finished up a four-year prison stint, and after finding his way back to music after some serious self-rehabilitation of the soul, Gunnells decided it was time to reignite the band — at once a source of pride and a stain on his heart of trauma, guilt and grief — and actually do it right. It's been a long time coming.
Cold as Life were initially founded way back in 1988 by guitarist Gunnells, drummer Roy Bates and fabled wild-man vocalist Rodney "Rawn Beauty" Barger. Many of Cold as Life's craziest stories (intraband brawls, confrontations at shows, heavy drinking) are credited to Barger's erratic behavior, but his talents as a belligerent vocalist and underclass poet remain obvious.
While constantly cycling through members who couldn't hang with the fraught Barger and Gunnells, the band scraped together many low-budget demos in their first five years, but that era of the band was tragically cut short before a proper album was recorded.
In 1993, Barger was shot to death in his sleep by a suspect (believed to be a man named Richard Werstine) who's never been charged. The band members were rocked, but they carried forward with Gunnells stepping up to vocal duties. However, it wasn't until 1998 — a decade after they'd formed — that Cold as Life would release their groundbreaking debut, Born to Land Hard.
Upping the ante of the already-heavy late-Nineties hardcore sound, the album features Gunnells' harsh screams, aggressive grooves and metallic riffs that hit like scraped knuckles on cold concrete. Sonically, it's some of the most viscerally brutal music of its kind, and lyrically even moreso.
Unlike many heavy bands who merely sang about morbid subjects, Cold as Life were living the bleak conditions expressed in their tormented discharges; criminal conduct, substance abuse, violence and suicidal ideation filled Gunnells' and Barger's (whose posthumous songs comprise half the album) candid lyrics.
To drive home the anguish, Born to Land Hard's cover is slapped with a gnarly photo of a newborn baby suffering from fetal cocaine exposure, underscoring the album's theme of being doomed from birth. On its rear, there's a portrait of Barger with the word "landed" above his death date, and the interior booklet contains a wanted poster of his alleged killer, Werstine. The final song, "Promise," swears vengeance on the fugitive: "You're twenty-three and dead/That promise will be kept." This was more than just music.
Born to Land Hard finally provided a proper document of what Cold as Life had been building toward in the decade prior, but the album that followed, 2000's Declination of Independence, was notoriously poorly mixed, and the chronically unstable lineup finally disbanded shortly thereafter.
Different versions of the group would reform to play live in the intervening years, but Gunnells — the band's primary writer and only remaining co-founder — hasn't performed with them in roughly two decades, meaning every prior "reunion" up until now has been quasi-official at best.
In 2018, Gunnells was convicted of an armed robbery that occurred in 2012, and was sentenced to up to 15 years in prison. He was ultimately discharged in April 2022 after enrolling in an inmate program that allowed him to become a vocational instructor, giving him another shot at life. One that might finally be a little warmer.
While speaking with Revolver a couple weeks before his first time onstage in 20 years, Gunnells radiates gratitude and contentment for the opportunities he currently has. He speaks frankly about his bygone struggles with the law and addiction, and doesn't shy away from the challenges he still faces, from strained relationships with his family to grieving the many lives who've been taken from him in the tumultuous past decades.
"I wasn't sure if I wanted to do music again," Gunnells admits. "Because there's a lot of heartbreak and a lot of loss in this Cold as Life story. There's a lot of people that are no longer breathing air that were in this band, and sometimes it can bring back some unwanted memories.
"But with this lineup, I couldn't be more excited, because I know all these guys' heads are in the right place. Their hearts are in the right place, they're [great] players and it's very exciting."
The current iteration of Cold as Life features Gunnells on vocals and guitar, returning Cold as Life bassist Craig Holloway (who did a stint with the band in the early days), additional guitarists Matt Martin and John Music, and drummer Jesse Wright. Gunnells was reluctant to even reignite the band at all, and emphasizes that he wouldn't have greenlit it without this particular set of musicians.
He's feeling so positive, in fact, that the group have already begun discussing the potential for new Cold as Life material, which Gunnells promises to be "hard as nails." For now, though, they're focused on completing what will easily be the biggest show of their entire career.
Gunnells says that back when the band were active in the late Nineties, they'd be lucky to draw 300 heads at a hometown show in Detroit. But on this Saturday, they'll be playing the Motor City to five times that many people — at least.
The 16-band bill — also boasting Terror, Integrity, Madball, Mindforce and many other vets and young bands alike — is a partnership with longtime booking collaborator Ramona Shureb of Black Iris Booking, Tied Down Detroit, and Pabst Blue Ribbon. It comes hot on the heels of June's Tied Down fest, which drew well over 2,000 hardcore fanatics for an intergenerational bonanza (featuring Trapped Under Ice, Negative Approach, Gorilla Biscuits, Drain and more) that positioned Detroit as major players in hardcore's current renaissance period.
Cold as Life are thrilled to see how the genre has grown during their absence from the scene, and they're grateful (not entitled) to once again be a part of it. Last year, Born to Land Hard finally received a long-overdue vinyl reissue from A389 Records, and last month Declination of Independence was given the presentation it's always deserved. Entirely remixed by new-gen hardcore producer extraordinaire Taylor Young, remastered by Brad Boatright, and emblazoned with restored artwork by Hunter Winstead, the record finally looks and sounds like the killer follow-up to Born to Land Hard it was supposed to be.
It's a new beginning for Cold as Life, and one that Gunnells and Holloway, who also joined the call with Revolver, are eager to get on with. To leave the cold — the street life, the self-sabotage, the violence, the senseless deaths — in the past, and celebrate the rejuvenated life of one of hardcore's most singular bands.
HOW DOES IT FEEL TO HAVE COLD TO LIFE BACK TOGETHER NOW?
JEFF GUNNELLS My heart's always been in Cold as Life and that culture and community, that hardcore world. I've always loved it, nurtured it. I've not always, maybe, acted that way, but it's something I've always respected and gravitated towards, so it feels great doing music again.
WITHIN THIS PARTICULAR LINEUP, WERE THERE ANY OLD WOUNDS THAT HAD TO HEAL OVER IN ORDER TO GET BACK TO BUSINESS?
GUNNELLS: Yeah, fucking Craig quit Cold as Life in the early Nineties and I was so mad at him. I didn't want him to leave because I loved working with him, but he's got his reasons for leaving.
CRAIG HOLLOWAY We were in our late teens, early twenties, and it's aggressive music, it's an aggressive scene. It can get ruthless. And we were getting into a situation where we were getting into a lot of fights, not internally, but at shows and stuff, and the opportunities to play certain venues were closing their doors on us, and I just was getting a little bit overwhelmed.
But the icing on the cake was when we went to record a demo, which we labeled Breakin the Law, and it was fantastic. It was amazing. You save all your money up to afford to buy a day in the studio, and I think we busted up over a dozen songs that day, and of course it was a long day.
So unfortunately we had brought some beers and did some drinking, and it got a little bit loose towards the end of the night. But what really was a downer for me was, as we were exiting the studio, an actual fight broke out. Now, granted the guy who started it was Rawn Beauty, and I don't know why he started it, but he had a short fuse and he started beating up guys in the band. And of course the guys fought back. They'd do it all the time.
For some reason I was invisible. I never got any hands laid on me, but I was mature enough to know that if somebody slugged me for no reason, I was going to get pissed off and hold it against them, and not mature enough to let it slide and say, "hey, we're just brothers, that's what brothers do." So I exited the band and those guys continued on and did some great things.
GUNNELLS It was chaotic back then. That's when we first started losing people to inner city life, I guess, and the lifestyles that we were living. So I had a feeling that was why [Craig left]. I still didn't want him to leave. I wanted him to punch somebody back!
JEFF, YOU JUST FINISHED UP A PRISON SENTENCE. WERE YOU THINKING ABOUT THE BAND WHILE YOU WERE AWAY?
GUNNELLS No. The exact opposite. I did a lot of writing. It was never in composition form, but I was writing continuously in prison just because you have nothing but time and feelings. But at that point, I wanted nothing to do with music.
I got out and connected with Dom [Romeo] with A389 records on the East Coast, and we ended up making a deal to re-press our recordings on vinyl. And when we did that, offers for shows started coming in and I turned them down for the longest time until it was just overwhelming, and we decided to do a hometown show.
But I wasn't thinking about Cold as Life, other than those bad memories. There was nothing good that would come to mind when I thought about Cold as Life. It was loss, it was tragedy, it was wasted potential and opportunities, and it was a burden to think about them, so I didn't.
When you work your way down in your security classification in prisons — in the upper levels, there's no music room. But in the lower levels, there's music rooms where you can go check out guitars and plug in and actually play. But I never did. Not one time. That's how far off I was from trying to do any kind of music.
THE BAND CONTINUED WHILE YOU WERE IN PRISON. DID YOU CONDONE THAT?
GUNNELLS No, I didn't condone it at all. I was furious. I was hurt by it. I had invested decades of my life into that. Rawn Beauty and myself were the writers, and when I went away, Roy [Bates, drummer] put together a lineup without any of the songwriters and I just felt betrayed.
CRAIG, YOU WERE IN THAT LINEUP WITHOUT JEFF FOR SOME TIME THOUGH, RIGHT?
HOLLOWAY Correct. I did the stint that Jeff is referring to [in the mid-2010s]. We did a seven-inch where we released a couple of tracks and then we did a tour, like 10 dates in the U.S., and we did a mini tour in Europe.
And I'm guilty, I apologized to Jeff, I should have reached out and let him know. He's got every right to be upset and I don't blame him. I'm upset with myself. But I'll be honest, when I was given the opportunity to play those songs again, I jumped on it.
But I'll just say it's night and day [between then and] now. It's a lot better.
JEFF, YOU SAID YOU DIDN'T THINK MUCH ABOUT THE BAND IN PRISON, BUT DID HAVING THE SOLITUDE TO CONTEMPLATE YOUR LIFE CHANGE YOUR PERCEPTION OF THE BAND'S HISTORY IN ANY WAY?
GUNNELLS No. It's right in-line with the band's history. That "Born to Land Hard" song starts out with, "A lot of us are born to land hard/To end up in a prison yard." It was all par for the course.
COLD AS LIFE HAS CONTINUED TO FORGE FORWARD THROUGH SO MANY LINEUP CHANGES OVER THE DECADES. WAS THERE EVER A TIME WHEN YOU THOUGHT IT WOULD BE DONE FOR GOOD?
GUNNELLS There were many times where I didn't think it'd survive. We just made that next best step forward and did what we could. But there was a lot of potential and opportunity that were squandered over those years because we were busy living that street life.
WHAT WERE SOME OF THE OPPORTUNITIES YOU DON'T THINK WERE ACHIEVED?
GUNNELLS So I think that potential and motivation, they mean nothing unless you have the discipline to back it. So the opportunities that I'm referring to were probably opportunities that never came our way because, like I said, we were busy living that street life. So them opportunities were squandered by what we were doing.
LIKE BIG TOURS AND PUTTING OUT RECORDS ON BIG LABELS AND STUFF LIKE THAT?
GUNNELLS Well, we never wanted to sign. We were always a DIY band and we stuck to those guns through thick and thin. We had offers coming in pretty consistently from the beginning. Maybe not quite the beginning, but we would have record deals on the table quite often, but we never wanted to do it. We always wanted to keep all the control to ourselves.
YOU GUYS HAVE A REPUTATION OF BEING SURROUNDED BY VIOLENCE. YOU ACTUALLY LIVED THAT "STREET LIFE," AS YOU'VE SAID. A LOT OF PEOPLE IN HARDCORE TEND TO ROMANTICIZE THE MORE DANGEROUS PERIODS BECAUSE THEY FEEL IT WAS MORE REAL THAN WHAT'S HAPPENING NOW. AS SOMEONE WHO ACTUALLY LIVED THAT REALNESS, DO YOU FEEL THAT WAY?
GUNNELLS So I think that aggression that Craig talked about earlier and the violence that you're talking about now, I think, in part, is what got me excited [about hardcore]. Head on the swivel. That element of danger was something that I was attracted to.
A fistfight is one thing, but when people start getting shot and stabbed, that's a completely different thing. So I'm excited about where things are going. I do think that danger is an element of punk and hardcore metal that has diminished over the years. It's a little more polished and it's a little more refined nowadays.
People are a little too sophisticated to punch each other in the nose and then buy each other a beer afterwards. But if I was to choose one or the other, I would choose the way it is today 100%.
HOLLOWAY When you're young, you're looking for that thrill, the adrenaline rush. You want the adventure of going down to the inner city and checking out a show, and you never know what to expect. You always got your hands clenched just in case, and you're looking around, like Jeff said.
That's how you develop street smarts and it's exciting and it adds to the show because the music is aggressive, it's raw, and people are going nuts. But like Jeff said, it gets a little bit old after a while, especially when your friends are getting in fights or police are shutting down shows and stuff like that.
THE STORIES ABOUT RAWN AND ALL THE BAGGAGE THAT SQUANDERED THOSE OPPORTUNITIES FOR YOU GUYS ARE SUCH AN INTEGRAL PART OF THE WAY PEOPLE TALK ABOUT COLD AS LIFE. IT'S MORE THAN JUST THE MUSIC. BUT DO YOU WISH THAT COLD AS LIFE'S STORY WAS JUST ABOUT THE MUSIC, OR DO YOU HAVE SOME SEMBLANCE OF APPRECIATION FOR EVERYTHING THAT CAME ALONG WITH IT?
HOLLOWAY Definitely don't want the deaths, that's for sure.
GUNNELLS That romance you talked about earlier, a lot of people do romanticize those days. That street life, that grit and grind, that dirt that people do. But there's a lot of thorns that come with that for guys that lived it.
From the outside looking in, yeah, there's something to revere or appreciate. But man, there's gravestones marking a lot of places of the homies that didn't make it, and that's a bitter pill to swallow. If I could get my homies back and trade them for all the stories, I would in a second. But we can't, it's part of it. It's a part of us, it's part of our history.
I'm a really transparent guy. I'll tell you the truth about me and about my life, the good, the bad, and the ugly — all of it. Sometimes, when I'm sharing the bad and the ugly, it comes with some guilt and some shame, some embarrassment.
But I feel like if I'm not transparent and I don't share the bad and the ugly with the good, then I might lose an opportunity to try to save somebody from walking a mile in those shoes, right?
So I'll tell you about my prison time. I'll tell you about my opiate addiction. I'll tell you about strained relationships with my children. It's a lot easier to unlearn than it is to learn, and I come to relationships now and have to unlearn all the bullshit that kept me safe, that kept people in the world at an arm's distance. To [learn to] allow people in.
It's not invincibility, it's vulnerability that leads to the most intimate human connections. I'm not invincible. I cry, man. I hurt from losing people and these strained relations, there's a lot of residuals that come from prison time. I still don't have good, healthy relationships with my children. So all that romanticizing people do, it comes with a fucking heavy price.
DO YOU THINK THAT YOUR EXPERIENCE IN PRISON, SPECIFICALLY, MADE YOU RECONSIDER THE VIOLENCE OF COLD AS LIFE, OR THE VIOLENCE OF HARDCORE IN A DIFFERENT WAY?
GUNNELLS Absolutely. So that price I talked about having to pay, I wasn't the only one that paid it. My children did, my family did. Anything that we decide to do, good or bad, is going to come with reward and consequence. I think twice, I deliberate often and decide now.
I'm not saying by any stretch and I'm perfect because I still struggle with life and loss and family and all of it. I sometimes feel like I'm still adjusting to being a free man. I've dropped the ball, I've shit the bed. When you shit in your hat, you got to wear that fucker.
Those years in prison, as hard as they were, on the ass end of it, it gives you a strength, a clarity, a perspective, a gratitude, a drive that I would've never had, had I not gone through what I went through.
So it's hard to say, but I'm grateful for those years that I was able to look in that proverbial mirror at all those little dirty, dark, ugly secrets. I think it's up to every human being to live the life they want to live and become the person they want to become. That time in prison allowed me to become who I wanted to become.
WITH ALL THAT SAID, YOU GUYS HAVE THAT SONG "PROMISE" THAT SWEARS REVENGE ON RAWN'S KILLER. PEOPLE IN YOUR ORBIT HAVE, FOR YEARS, PROMISED STREET JUSTICE IF HE'S EVER FOUND. DO YOU STILL HAVE THAT PERSPECTIVE NOW GIVEN WHAT YOU JUST SAID ABOUT RE-EXAMINING YOUR LIFE IN PRISON?
GUNNELLS Yes. So there's a duality of man, in general, right? My heart says to forgive. See, this is the thing about forgiveness, or grace, or mercy, or any of it. Nobody wants to talk about forgiveness or grace until they're in need of it.
So in my heart — because I've been in need of forgiveness, grace, mercy — I would love to extend that to [Richard] Werstine. I would love to. But I also know that other side of me.
So again, I'm transparent and I'm honest in my heart. I would love to forgive the dude, but I know that I can't.
BORN TO LAND HARD TURNS 25 THIS YEAR. WHAT DO YOU GUYS MAKE OF IT AND WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO YOU ALL THESE YEARS LATER?
HOLLOWAY Well, I think it was groundbreaking when it came out. When I was in the band, Rawn was the vocalist, and the only time that we ever played without Rawn for me was when we played at CBGBs, and it was for [Madball's] Set It Off record release back in '94, and it was a great show.
But [Born to Land Hard] shook me. When I first heard Jeff's vocals, I said, "Wow, I've never heard anything like that before." I was like, this is Jeff? This is crazy. You could just feel it. I hate to use the word hate, but you could feel the anger, the frustration.
What's nice about Cold as Life is they went against the grain. They weren't trying to play a million miles an hour like a lot of bands were. They were heavy or they were slow, and everything was premeditated so it was just more powerful.
GUNNELLS So as far as groundbreaking, when we recorded Born to Land Hard, I never thought it would be what it ended up being. We were just some hardcore guys putting together what we thought sounded good to us.
Craig mentioned premeditated. I think a lot of that happened by accident. I'm flattered, honestly, and overwhelmed that it's still relevant. Because we all know a hardcore band will put out a record one year and it's completely forgotten about unless it's one of the standouts.
YOU GUYS ARE ABOUT TO HEADLINE YOUR OWN FESTIVAL IN DETROIT NEXT WEEKEND. WHAT DOES THAT MEAN TO YOU?
HOLLOWAY It's going to be exciting to get back onstage with Jeff. It's been a minute since he's been onstage. I went to the Tied Down fest a few months ago and I was blown away by how fantastic it was; the way it was run, the security, and all the people that showed up.
I would've never bet any money that we would've had that kind of show in Detroit. I still can't believe it. So I'm looking forward to this one because it's going to be more of the same.
GUNNELLS The response has been overwhelming. I think the pre-sales right now are right around 1,500 people. When we were back out there regularly playing shows, we'd be lucky to get a 250, 300-person turnout.
This genre of music, this culture and community, has nurtured itself while I was gone. It's healthy and it's vibrant, it's diverse, and it's raw, and people are investing in building up instead of tearing down by fighting at shows or stabbing people.
It's a night and day difference from when we were younger guys compared to the people that are coming to shows now.
YOU'VE TALKED ABOUT THINGS YOU'RE PROUD OF AND THINGS YOU REGRET THROUGHOUT THE BAND'S HISTORY. WHEN YOU GUYS RETURN TO THE STAGE THIS WEEKEND, WHAT PARTS OF COLD AS LIFE DO YOU REALLY WANT TO CELEBRATE?
GUNNELLS Well, I don't want people hyper-focused on those stories and everything that came with it. I'm excited about the future, what we have going on. Now, Ramona [Shureb] from Black Iris Booking and I have partnered. Craig is an A-gamer in his field of art and graphics, Matt Martin is a hell of a guitar player, Jesse Wright's a hell of a drummer and John Music's a hell of a guitar player.
Everything that we have moving forward, that's what I want to focus on. I want to celebrate being alive, being here to tell my story,
All that loss and that trauma, that tragedy, it's in the past, so that's where it should be. And all the good things that this music scene and this genre has been growing into, I want people to know that I support it, that I'm for it 100%.
Even though that element of danger is what got me into this genre of music, I want to see us against the world instead of us against each other. And that's how it used to be, us against each other.
I want these kids to know that if you fall, you get yourself back up. If you fail, it's not failure, it's a lesson. I want people to know that I support the direction that this is going.
FOR A YOUNGER PERSON WHO'S JUST NOW DISCOVERING COLD AS LIFE FOR THE FIRST TIME, WHAT DO YOU WANT THEM TO TAKE AWAY FROM YOUR MUSIC AND ALL THAT COLD AS LIFE IS?
HOLLOWAY Well, hopefully it inspires them to pick up an instrument and start a band. Make some more music, create.
GUNNELLS I want them to know that Cold as Life is a cautionary story. We're a cautionary band. What you decide matters more than you realize. From the words we choose to use, to our actions, we're a cautionary tale.
Listen, if you want to end up in prison, do what we did. If you want to get shot and killed, do what we did, because somebody's got it for you waiting. But if you want something healthy and you want something good, you invest in it.
We're always at that proverbial intersection, right where we do right or we do wrong. At every moment, any given moment, we're at that proverbial intersection. You want bad, do bad. You want good, you do good. That's all.
But use us as a cautionary tale because that shit's for real and somebody's got something for you, if that's what you want. No matter what you're looking for, you're going to find it.
