SCOOTER WARD On Having Writer's Block: ‘I Wanted It To Be Perfect For The Fans And Perfect For COLD'

Scotty J from Rock Titan conducted an interview with COLD frontman Scooter Ward prior to the band's September 7 show at Chameleon Club in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. You can watch the entire chat below. A few excerpts follow (transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET).

On the release of "The Things We Can't Stop", COLD's first studio album in eight years:

Scooter: "I'm excited about the record coming out. With being on tour and being with people every day and discussing things, the record has taken a backseat. I really love focusing on the people and the shows. It's kind of nice to sit around and stress about a record coming out in a week."

On new anti-bully song "Shine":

Scooter: "It was personal as far as when I was in my early childhood going to school, I used to get picked on at the bus stop, chased behind the grocery store and beat up, stuff like that. Our photographer friend in California, her little girl was getting bullied a lot. The crazy thing about the song is that I had the chorus for, 'I want to see you shine. I want to see you go for the win.' I had the uplifting part, but I didn't know what the song was going to be about yet. It tortured me because I go, 'It's a really pretty chorus, so it has to have a perfect verse. It has to have an emotional thing to it.' When Emily was telling me about her child, it just kind of all came full circle. The crazy thing about that song is we've probably gotten the most reaction from that song than any song we've ever released online from fans and from people that aren't fans. I've had fans and people that aren't fans that have listened to the song and they listen to it with their kid, or their kid brings it to them, and it opens up a dialogue between them about bullying and about what's going on. This one dad was like, 'Dude, I didn't even know my kid was being bullied until that song.' It was pretty cool they were able to talk about it. She didn't know he had been bullied as a kid. All these kind of things are happening with that song. It's a really nice thing. I feel proud of it."

On getting over a case of writer's block:

Scooter: "I had never had writer's block before in my life. Ever since I was 12 years old, I've always been able to pick up a guitar and do melodies, and write lyrics, write stories, it's never happened before. On this record, I had some decent lyrics for the songs. And then when I was going through [it], I just wanted to be better. I just scrapped everything and started over. When I did that, there was a lot of pressure that I put on myself. I wanted it to be perfect for the fans and perfect for COLD. So I got in my head about it, and I just woke up one morning and I forgot everything about writing. Not to be poetic, but it felt like the world took it away from me. I felt super depressed. I went into my own little dark world. It was horrible. It was a brutal thing. That's my thing. That's the way I take care of my family — everything was gone. I was, like, 'What am I going to do right now?' The snowball started getting bigger and bigger of all that. Then one night, I was flipping through something online and I saw Nick Cave had a documentary, 'One More Time With Feeling'. It was about him creating a record close to where his son fell off a bridge. It's just a tragic, beautiful documentary. The cadence of his voice when he was talking in the beginning, I go, 'Well, there you go. This is going to be something special.' I watched it maybe 20, 30 times and every time, it helped me a little more and a little more. I was like, 'If he can go through that and create. What the hell am I crying about here? It's going to be okay.' I started writing a little bit every day as he suggested in his documentary. It helped. One day, the gates opened up and everything was back. It was nice."

"Things We Can't Stop" was released on September 13 via Napalm Records.