Cola: Cost of Living Adjustment

Cost of Living Adjustment Album Cover

Gustavo Vincentin

Metal / Indie

May 11, 2026

The Montreal-based trio Cola has always sounded like their music lives in a dystopia built by the creative freedoms of their own minds. Even on Deep in View and The Gloss, the band’s version of post-punk felt colder and more controlled than most of the groups around them. On Cost of Living Adjustment, that control starts to loosen. The songs are louder, rougher, and more willing to drag things out instead of cutting everything down to the basics.

The difference shows up right away on Forced Position. The song feels tense without trying too hard to force it, and that pressure carries through most of the album. Hedgesitting is one of the clearest examples of the band pushing outside their usual style. The guitars are heavier than what Cola normally goes for, and the song feels less clean and tightly packed than their earlier material.

That change certainly helps the album, but it also creates some of its larger problems. A lot of the songs sit in a similar pace and mood, especially in the middle of the record. Cola still holds back even when the music gets louder, and sometimes it feels like the band pulls away right when a song is about to fully open up. The restraint works on certain tracks, but across the full album it can make parts blend together more so than they should.

Still, the album is stronger when it focuses less on sounding polished and more on indulging in its atmosphere. Cola has always been good at repetition, and here they use it to make the songs feel worn down instead of enthrallingly hypnotic. Nothing on the record sounds comfortable. Even the quieter moments feel restless.

The title Cost of Living Adjustment points pretty directly toward the album’s themes, but the writing avoids turning into obvious political commentary. Lyricist Tim Darcy focuses more on routine exhaustion than direct statements. The songs are filled with work, pressure, boredom, and the feeling of constantly adjusting to things getting worse and worse. On Forced Position, the line “part time but double speed” says more about burnout than most straightforward political lyrics could.

Darcy’s writing still slips into abstraction a lot, and sometimes individual lines feel more interesting than meaningful. But the record works best when he keeps things simple. Some of the strongest moments come from quick observations that sound tossed off rather than carefully written.

His vocals help with that too. Darcy still has the same detached delivery that has always defined Cola, but here it sounds more tired than cool. Earlier albums sometimes felt emotionally locked off. This one feels more human, even if the band never fully drops its distance.

What makes Cost of Living Adjustment interesting is that Cola does not completely change their sound. The album mostly works by pushing their existing style further than before. Sometimes that pays off, and sometimes it leaves the songs feeling stuck between restraint and release. But even when the record drifts, it rarely feels directionless.

It is probably not Cola’s catchiest album, nor their most impressive either. But it feels like the first time the band has stopped trying to keep everything perfectly contained. That alone gives Cost of Living Adjustment more weight than their earlier records.