The Beginning of All Things to End  (Audio CD) 
by Mudvayne

From the opening salvo of "Pooploser," starting with a crying baby and the ascending chant "f**king piece of shit, and you'll never amount to nothing," it's clear that The Beginning of All Things to End, a reissue of MuDvAyNe's out-of-print 1997 EP, Kill I Oughta, conveys an opinion. The former EP, now 11 tracks long, also includes "interludes" from their gold-certified debut, L.D. 50, plus a duo of bonus remixes. As such, the new CD is valuable for new fans anxious to own Kill I Oughta songs, and as a whole, it's also a surprisingly cohesive and powerful outing in the broad nu metal genre. "Seed" boasts the grind-groove power of Pantera, while the melodic yet seething sounds of "Cultivate," with its big, funky bass line and heated vocals from singer Kud, also features the raw honesty that permeates MuDvAyNe's on-the-edge sound. The Midwestern quartet, with its face paint and trendy look, have a welcome breadth and depth to their music and style and are certainly worth digging into, The Beginning being a good place to start. --Katherine Turman