Nothing Remains - Tomorrow's Catastrophe
by James

Let’s get this out of the way, first rattle out of the box – the production on this cd is pretty bad. Not so bad that you can’t make out what is being played, but still, the whole thing is really muddy sounding. Beyond that admittedly major complaint, Tomorrow’s Catastrophe is a pretty kick ass death metal release. While Nothing Remains isn’t trying to reinvent the wheel, they are doing what they do extremely well. My main thing with death metal as a genre is that if you try going full throttle the entire time, I am going to get bored. I need time changes, slow parts, fast parts, blast beats and some groove, here and there. Perhaps, that makes me a half ass death metal fan and if so, then fuck it, that’s what I am.

Musically, Nothing Remains seems to fall into the Dying Fetus/Suffocation class of death metal bands. While there is a lot of speed and technical riffage to be found, there is also lots of slower groove thrown in to keep things interesting. Not once was this band guilty of dragging something out for too long, which is a nice aspect for any band of any genre to have. I like not being able to predict what the band is going to do next. I am especially digging on John Logsdon’s vocals. This one guy does what it took Dying Fetus two vocalists to pull off. You get the low growls, the high screams and the mid range yells all in one dude. This lends itself to about as much vocal diversity as I’ve heard from a band playing this style of music – yet another reason why you never really know where the songs on Tomorrow’s Catastrophe are going to take you. All you can do is strap yourself in and enjoy the ride.

As I said, Nothing Remains isn’t trying to reinvent the genre with this release. They just tried to release a quality album for death metal fans. In that goal, I think they succeeded admirably. One can only hope that the guys are doing well enough to afford higher quality production for their next release. Even then, I would still be first in line to hear anything Nothing Remains puts out.