Scoot Ward describes himself as a laid back person with a quiet, shy attitude. Yet inside that timid, loner exterior, there is a well of anger that often threatens to explode and shower those around him.

Yet despite all of this anger, Ward really cares about people. He cares about whether or not they are doing well, what they have been up to and where they are headed.

He also cares deeply about what other people think of his music, or so he says. But during a recent telephone interview with the soft-spoken lead vocalist of Cold, he often didn’t seem so sure.

“We put out ‘Go Away’ as a single because it’s hard,” Ward said from a pay phone at the Ranch Bowl in Omaha, Nebraska, “and that’s the type of audience we wanted to target right away.

“If you win that type of audience,” he added, “then you’ll surprise them with the rest of the album. They’ll listen to it because it’s not quite what they were expecting.

“On the other hand,” he continued, “we could have released a more mellow song and drew in that type of audience. But let’s face it, that type of audience would have heard how hard “Go Away” is and they would have tuned out.

“If somebody is going to be closed-minded about what we play,” he concluded, “well then, fuck them because we don’t want them to buy the fucking record anyway.”

He knows a lot about accepting various styles of music and being open-minded. His band is from Florida, a state that has quite a diverse music scene, according to Ward.

“Florida is pretty cool,” he explained. “There are a lot of bands coming up in Florida, but they all have different sounds and don’t copy each other. It’s very different than the Seattle scene.”

Although the grunge revolution might have opened the doors for Cold’s recent inauguration into the music industry, Ward claims that he wasn’t particularly inspired by any of the Seattle groups (but he did admit that he loves The Cure and listens to that group’s music everyday).

He also stated that he’s not sure whether his voice sounds like Bush’s Gavin Rossdale or not (the comparison has been made numerous times in various CD reviews and concert critiques).

In fact, Ward isn’t even sure if he’s heard much of Bush’s music at all, and he’s not intrigued to find out whether or not his voice is similar to Rossdale’s.

Ward doesn’t really keep up much with current music. He isn’t a fan of heavy metal (which he admits is strange because of Cold’s heavy, morose sound), but he does like Limp Bizkit, Tool and the Deftones.

He’s been listening to the new Beastie Boy’s record, and he says that it is pretty good. But he’s not going to buy it. He doesn’t buy much music.

Which probably explains why he’d never heard of producer Ross Robinson until his friend Fred Durst, who is a member of Limp Bizkit, introduced the two.

“Ross became our brother in a week,” Ward commented. “He’s so much like us. It was killer. He was really into what we were doing and had a lot of great suggestions. It was excellent to work with somebody like that.”

Robinson liked a Cold demo tape that Durst had played for him. In fact, he liked the demo so much that he helped the group sign a record deal and then produced and mixed Cold’s self-titled major-label debut.

Unfortunately, the group didn’t like Robinson’s mix (Ward said that it reminded him too much of Robinson’s work with Korn, Limp Bizkit and The Deftones) and hired former Soundgarden producer Terry Date to remix it.

After that, the group finally exited the recording studio (“I was so happy to leave,” Ward stated, “because I get so bored in the studio. I hate to be confined to one place for a long time”) and hit the road, where the group remains to this day.

“Well, that’s not entirely true,” Ward corrected. “Our record label called us up one day and told us that they wanted us to record a cover version.

“They gave us one day to get it done in,” he continued, “so we went through a long list of potential songs and settled on David Bowie’s ‘Space Oddity.'”

Unfortunately, the group hasn’t played “Space Oddity” since the studio, but Ward promised that he is working on making it a part of the group’s set list.

Cold also plays a lot of its older music (the group formed in the mid 1980s) off of its 10 or 11 (Ward can’t remember the exact number) independent releases, some of which were released under the group name Grundig.

But at the end of the day, it isn’t about which songs the group plays live or in what order the group chose to play them in.

What matters is that the audience had fun. What matters is that the group had the opportunity to play.

“It’s a good thing we got signed,” Ward said. “I was about ready to go back to college and call it quits. Luckily that didn’t happen because the music is all about my pain and depression. Without music, how would I release it all? How would I confront other people to face theirs?”

Cold will be appearing at the Safari tonight with Gravity Kills and Pitchshifter. Tickets are $10, and the concert begins at 7 p.m.