The Cost played their last show at Berkeley's 924 Gilman Street, the venue they called home, on July 5, 2003.
Oakland natives and childhood friends Stephen Loewinsohn and Shaun Osburn met Michael Hoffman in middle school.
The three of them began playing together in various bands in the early 1990s before adding vocalist Laird Rickard and performing as The Cost for the first time on New Year's Eve 1999.
Allmusic's Erik Hage called the album a "tightly played and aggressive effort that succeeds most when it steers clear of the doomier, sludgy moments.
"[3] Pitchfork Media's Brendan Reid, in a mixed review of the album, criticized the band's tempo and time signature changes and complimented the album's "more straightforward rock tracks ('Hated Man') and the ones that sustain the quiet side of the dynamics see-saw ('Symptomatic')," where, Reid described, "the band's anger actually sounds like something more than Drive Like Jehu on autopilot.