What Goes Around Comes Around

Back when Dead By 23 records was in its prime I was a bit out of touch. I had this period of a couple of years when I was extremely busy with studying and I lost touch with everything. I was on the verge of losing touch with hardcore completely and giving up as it felt like there was just no time for it. Other stuff had become a priority. And at that point, Dead By 23 came on the scene and changed what record collecting was and would become. Gone was the traditional ‘one colour vinyl version, the rest black’ model that had previously existed. In came an approach which jacked up the collectability factor tenfold. There would be at least 5 different versions of each record as a minimum, with almost endless uber limited nerdy versions in stupidly low quantities. I have a friend who, a few years ago, had about 16 different Frostbite 7”s. Someone else commented the other day that they used to have 17 different Final Plan 7”s. And this is why it was cool – if you liked a band or record enough, there was always more to try to get. It was a collectors dream and worst nightmare at the same time, depending on your viewpoint. Initially I thought it sucked but then as time went on I got sucked in. And even though the label hasn’t really been active in a few years, rare variants that I don’t have (or have never seen) still pop up from time to time. So here’s the latest one I was keen to grab. This is a black vinyl copy of the first Down To Nothing 7”.

Interestingly, there was actually never a black vinyl pressing of this record. But, outside of the ‘regular’ colours of this record that were made for the first pressing, there were 31 copies that were swirls / transitions (not sure what the correct term is according to the discography as it’s no longer online). These 31 7”s were numbered in order of colour. The numbering started at the blackest copies, and continued to the lightest version. I once saw a photo where some dude owned literally about half of the 31 copies to himself, and when laid out in order you could clearly see the transition from black to purple. Anyway, of these 31 copies, only three were pure black, and as you can see it is one of these that I have just acquired.

I actually already owned two other different shades of the 31 numbered transition copies, so I took those out to show the progression from black to purple. I think this photo looks pretty good itself – there’s no need to see an additional 28 copies to see how the numbering and colouring works.

Given that I was pulling these copies out, I also figured I would pull out the other copies of this 7” I owned to take a family photo. I posted this on instagram yesterday.

Pictured (from left to right, starting at the top) are:
- Test press on black vinyl
- Release show sleeve on greenish vinyl 9/30
- 1st press regular sleeve on greenish vinyl
- 1st press regular sleeve on clear/purple vinyl (quite clear in colour)
- 1st press transition copy #1/31
- 1st press transition copy #9/31
- 1st press transition copy #29/31
- 1st press regular sleeve on clear/purple vinyl (almost opaque)
- 2nd press red vinyl in regular sleeve
- 2nd press transition copy on solid red vinyl #3/30 in hand coloured sleeve
- Red screen printed sleeve sold at This Is Hardcore #1/6

The seller also threw in a copy of the Frostbite 7”. This one comes in a Floorpunch rip off sleeve. I already had one of these on clear red vinyl. However, this copy is a red/black mix copy. Not sure how came out like this, but probably not many. This is Dead By 23 after all.

There are still probably lots of Frostbite variants I don’t have as (including this one) I ‘only’ have 9 different versions. There are a couple of very limited sleeves that I would like, but they are so stupidly rare that I'm not even going to bother adding them to my wants list.