The slightly more palatable answer to Nickelback, Seether also specialise in making the legacy of grunge relatively radio-friendly, at least to the stadium rock crowd. As such, it’s perhaps little surprise that they decided to follow Nirvana and Alice In Chains by releasing a live unplugged album, that should further their mainstream appeal.

Drawn from the band’s two albums, Disclaimer and Karma & Effect, One Cold Night predictably sees them run through most of their softer songs: ‘The Gift’, ‘Plastic Man’ and breakthrough hit ‘Broken’ (in an acoustic version of its original form, rather than the Amy Lee duet). The reinterpretation of heavier songs like ‘Gasoline’, and the inclusion of Pearl Jam’s ‘Immortality’, are slightly more interesting prospects, however.

For the most part, it works well, with the acoustic performance showing a new side to the songs – even a few are a little ragged – but one can’t help feeling things sag a little through the set, as the band don’t have quite enough great songs to make the transition. On the plus side, however, the sound quality as good and the small, intimate audience are largely restrained to applause between songs, rather than drowning out the sound. All together it makes for a live album that, while not absolutely essential, will certainly be a special treat for fans of the band.

Unfortunately the bonus DVD, containing footage of the same show, is let down by an over-zealous director who decides, perhaps to compensate for the lack of action on-stage (the band merely sitting on stools with their acoustic guitars) that he needs to change the shot every few seconds. It’s not too bad at first, but after watching for any length of time gets very annoying. I counted the number of times it cut between different shots during ‘Remedy’ and made it literally one hundred – and that’s on top of the fact that most of those shots involved the camera panning or zooming. Suffice to say that, more than for most music DVDs, it’s not one you’re likely to be coming back to, so just as well it’s only a ‘bonus’ feature really.

Overall, while not quite as special as being there on the night, at least this album showcases the band’s songs in a new format, and as such offers the fans something different rather than a poor quality ‘best-of’ set that seems like an attempt to deprive the fans of their hard-earned cash.
(4/5)