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As the numbered days of the old Jacksonville Coliseum grow mercifully fewer and fewer, the shows at that much-maligned 6,000-seat venue grow more significant.
To the Jacksonville-based band Cold, who was sandwiched in the middle of a hard rock triple bill there Tuesday night, the show was simultaneously a homecoming and a coming out.
The band had hit it semi-big with its last record, 13 Ways To Bleed On Stage, but Scooter Ward and the boys are riding high on the new single Stupid Girl and preparing to drop their next full-length album (Year of the Spider, which they're hoping will be huge) in a couple weeks.
"To play in this place before it gets [demolished] is a really big deal," Ward said from the stage, after chanting a Dorothy-esque refrain of "there's no place like home."
In truth, the band's music didn't sound terribly good, but that was due in large part to the Coliseum's awful acoustics -- one of the reasons the place has a date with the wrecking ball in the first place.
Cold sounded more forceful when they played the Marquee Theatre a while back, and that was before the band had its strong new material at its fingertips. That was back when they were just sludge monkeys.
Now they're sludge monkeys with a little more panache and a lot better songs, and they've quickened their pace on the road to becoming a very good and very moody hard rock band. Maybe by the time the new arena gets finished, they'll have it all figured out.
The more established metal band Godsmack headlined Tuesday, with the talented rockers presenting material from their new album Faceless and their smash 2000 breakthrough Awake.
What keeps Godsmack itself from becoming faceless is Sully Erna, the multi-tasking frontman who sings, screams, plays guitar when he wants to and plays drums like a man possessed.
At one point Tuesday, Erna appeared at the back of the arena for a kind of drum duel with three other drummers on the mainstage -- and the guy more than held his own, flipping sticks and raining down beat after beat.
Erna's biggest job, though, was steering the band through its hits with his low, growling voice. He did this well, although I confess to finding the music he sings over to be pretty monotonous.
Compared with hypnotically dull show opener Breaking Benjamin, though, Godsmack sounded like the Beatles. BB has nothing unique to offer an already crowded hard rock marketplace, and there was a sign mid-set that they actually knew that to be true.
"I'm supposed to say three times that we're Breaking Benjamin," the singer said. "Breaking Benjamin, Breaking Benjamin, Breaking Benjamin -- there you go. The label guys are happy."
Sorry, boys, it's gonna take more than that to make you memorable. And your ugly $32 T-shirts aren't going to help either.