Over-distorted chugging guitars, monotonous droning drumbeats, muddled subsonic bass lines and angst-ridden screaming sessions.

If this is your perception of modern hard rock, stay far, far away from the Annex this Sunday when southern-bred COLD arrives to shatter these preconceptions propagated by the group’s talentless, cookie-cutter nu-metal brethren.

With less then two months until the April 29 release of its third major-label album, Year of the Spider, COLD has hit the road to give true fans an intimate sneak peek at the band’s new material.

Following the disappointing outcome of COLD’s first full-throttle self-titled album in 1998, these boys from Jacksonville, Fla., realized that in order to survive in the ocean of hard rock, they would need to reinvent themselves.

As evident on their 2000 follow-up 13 Ways to Bleed On Stage, the members of COLD reached down deep, pulled out the true musicians inside themselves and created one of the most melodic hard-rock albums since the dawn of nu metal.

With an emphasis more on auditory hooks and melody than break-neck-speed thrashing, COLD demonstrated that not every modern hard-rock song needs to be an auditory representation of the negativity and cynicism of the surrounding world. Instead, the members of COLD sought to produce an album based on the digestion of the darkness of the world, and thus offer a look at the feelings that are produced from the spiteful distractions of the human experience as evident in their chart-shredding singles “Just Got Wicked” and “No One.”

Ultimately, singer Scooter Ward, guitarists Kelly Hayes and Terry Balsamo, bassist Jeremy Marshall and drummer Sam Candlass rose above the sludge pit of nu-metal clones both lyrically and musically. After finally earning the respect of the metal community as a result of opening for such bands with notoriously cruel fans as Marilyn Manson and Godsmack, as well as garnishing a 2001 Ozzfest slot, the band returned to the studio to produce its self-proclaimed “best album yet.”

Prior to kicking off their tour Thursday in Lancaster, Penn., bassist Jeremy Marshall took some time out of his day off to sit down with the Badger Herald and answer some questions via telephone.

Badger Herald: First off, how does it feel to be the headlining act on your own tour?

Jeremy Marshall: Oh, it’s something I’ve always dreamed of since the first day I picked up the guitar and tried to mess around with it. But now we have to set a higher goal. You have to kind of move on, because you don’t want to become stagnant and end up doing the same things over and over.

BH: You have warned the club owners if you’re using pyrotechnics, right?

JM: (laughing) No, we don’t use any pyro. [Pyro] just takes away from the music itself and makes [the performance] more theatrical and less musical, and our band has always been about the music.

BH: Is there anything new that COLD is doing in terms of a stage show?

JM: This first tour that we’re doing is more like a promotional tour. We’ve stripped it down basically to nothing. We’re not doing a major production. We just want people to get a sneak peek at how the record is going to sound and talk to them about how we wrote the songs — kind of like “An Evening With COLD” or a “Sessions” type of thing.

BH: In writing your last album, 13 Ways to Bleed On Stage, your band claimed to want to develop songs with stronger hooks. What was the game plan for Year of the Spider?

JM: On [13 Ways to Bleed On Stage], our choruses would be good hooks, but this time we tried to take that approach to the next level by making both the choruses and verses a good hook. It’s a really nice record, and I’m really proud of it, and I think it’s the best thing we’ve ever done.

BH: It seems that a lot of rock stars today like to crawl up on the proverbial soapbox and offer their political views. I’ll give you a chance now to voice your personal standpoint on the possibility of war in Iraq.

JM: I’ve really just tried to tune all of that out. I’ll just let [the

military] take care of it and hope that I don’t get blown up (laughing).

BH: What are your expectations for this new album? Are you setting any goals, or are you just going to go out and do it?

JM: (serious tone) We’re just going go do it. (laughing) If you set your expectations too high and it takes a little longer than expected, people get disappointed. We’re just going to pound this music into people’s heads and then sit back and see if they’ll buy it. And I think they will, because this album is phenomenal.

BH: What are your touring plans after this first headlining tour?

JM: I just got word this morning we might go on tour opening for Staind again. We’ve been talking about Godsmack, too. And maybe if these singles start to catch, there might be the possibility of headlining again.

BH: Finally, what can Madison expect when you arrive at the Annex Sunday?

JM: We are going to have a “Storytellers” type of atmosphere, but we are going to rock, don’t get me wrong. We’re still going to up on the stage spitting and sweating and rocking out, but in between songs Scooter is going to be talking and telling everyone how this song came about and how that song got written. But we are going to rock. You don’t worry about that.

94.1 WJJO presents COLD, at The Annex, 1206 Regent St., in an 18-and-up show this Sunday, March 9, at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $10 in advance, $12 at the door, and are available at The Regent Street Retreat and all Ticketmaster outlets. Go to www.intheannex.com for more details.