The Day Everything Became Nothing "Slow Death by Grinding" CD
[No Escape]
Great, great stuff.  This succinct EP follows up this Australian group's debut full-length and delivers an improved dose of heavy as fuck midpaced death/grind.  The band contains members of Fuck... I'm Dead and Blood Duster, just for reference, and their sound is a thick and nasty slab of ultra chunky power chords and guttural vocal growls.  The recording on this thing is fucking pristine, with perfect clarity and a really dense, well rounded sound.  The mix is balanced, the percussion sounds nice and resonant, the guitars are massive and churning, the bass is thick and fills all the gaps, and the vocals are right in there with the music - shifting from gurgling growls to a few higher snarls without any distractions.  Seriously, very few bands of this nature ever nail down recordings that sound this good, so I'm thrilled with that aspect of the release.  Musically the songs are fairly consistent with one another, averaging around three minutes each and plowing through tons of burly rhythms with basic song structures.  There are some mildly groovy breakdown types of things going on at times, but it's all killer stuff, none of it sounds forced or out of place at all.  "Nothing But Death" speeds things up a little at times, but it's most notable in the drumming rather than the guitar parts, which are so detuned that they sort of sound slow ‘n' sludgy no matter what!  "Fuel for Hatred" is a Satyricon cover that has a little more of a punk rock vibe happening to some of its chord progressions and is actually the most memorable song herein (I'd pretty much call it catchy!).  I've not heard the original but I'm loving this version!  Make no mistake though, the other songs are all solid.  The last track is a live rendition of "Mortem" that sounds almost as good as the studio material, just a little more distant of course.  They seem to have added in a shitload of fake applause and cheering and stuff, which is amusing, but it makes the song a little harder to make out as a whole.  Visually this fucker looks like a million bucks, too.  Sure, the whole gory-photos-of-faux-deceased-band-members thing has been done a million times before, but I've never seen it done anywhere near as awesomely as this.  Damn near the entire booklet is packed with full color photographs of the lineup as corpses, from different angles and in a totally slick, professional, and artistic fashion.  No joke, this thing looks fucking impressive, I love it.  Very much recommended.  If they keep this level of quality up I'll end up being a massive supporter in the future.  I'm telling you, the fucking layout totally raises the bar for every band that has ever even considered such a concept.  Great work. (7/10)
Running time - 16:37, Tracks: 5
[Notable tracks: Fiends Applaud, the Gore is Over, Fuel for Hatred]
No Escape Records - http://www.noescaperecords.com

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