Warning: negative nancy review ahead!!!!! (it’s been a while)…..

Here’s one of those reissues that has be scratching my head. There are plenty of albums that deserved  a reissue- for example Desecrator’s Subconscious Release a few years ago, or God Macabre‘s The Winterlong, or Gorement’s The Ending Quest. Hard to find albums that were overlooked, or before their time, badly produced, or just amazing records that went out of print. So honestly, please tell me of I’m wrong- was anyone reading this site really, truly clamoring for a reissue of  Killing Addiction‘s 1993 debut Omega Factor?

Originally released on the legendarily bad JL America, (that should be a clue), I missed this album the first time around, and probably for good reason- it’s not really very good. It’s OK, a rough and ready melding of early American death metal (Suffocation, Cannibal Corpse, Morbid Angel etc) , thrash and technical metal, but certainly nothing I would deem worthy of legendary status needing a reissue.

There’s some OK American death metal chugging , squealing and blasting going on, and the title track, the album’s best cut is a solid number , but then after that with ” Equating the Trinity” and “Nothing Remains” delivering the same song, I’ve lost interest with the boring riffs and faceless growling vocals. Even attempts at being a little more experimental such as “Impaled”, fall flat.

If you really are a collector of obscure, unnecessary releases, as a bonus, you get 1991’s Necrosphere EP and 1990s Legacies of Terror demo along with a remastered version of Omega Factor, which still sounds pretty rough, and these 6 tracks are even rougher. There are no other bonuses  such as liner notes or stuff, just a slighter more colorful take on the cover art.

When you consider 1993 also saw the release of Covenant, Individual Thought Patterns, Screams of Anguish,  Elements, Stillborn, Dreams of the Carrion Kind, and Breeding the Spawn ( where the fuck is THAT reissue????) and that’s just the notable American releases that year, Omega Factor seems almost comically neanderthal and amateurish in its delivery and style, even compared to more obscure, underground  releases of that year like say Rottrevore’s  Iniquitous,  Deteriorate’s Rotting In Hell, or Morta Skuld’s Dying Remains. But I suppose that’s some of the charm, and maybe this is a bit of a ‘cult’ release due to its competition that year, but I personally don’t see it .

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