Salt Lake City, Utah’s Wicked Innocence just reactivated as an active band a few months ago and that goes swimmingly with the reissue of their second album – Omnipotence from 1995.  I will not claim to be an expert on the band’s three other albums, because other than a few snippets here and there, never owned them.  However when I fronted Internal Bleeding back in the day when we played the Milwaukee Metalfest in 1995 I picked up this album.  Crap one of the members may have been at the fest and I spoke with them, but I can’t definitively remember.  To say the band was ahead of their time in 1995 is a proverbial understatement.  But they were also “out there” in terms of combining brutal death metal with off the wall type of death metal equipped with atmospherics, technicality and in some respect I can see how this band influenced Gorguts on their 1998 Obscura album.  Parts of Omnipotence seems to be all over the place, following a non-linear path, thus keeping the listener on their toes, but some parts could make a listener scratch their head, saying whatttt?

This out of print classic is once again available as a remastered slim digipak through Burning Dogma Records – who have done a nice job with the reissue.  Omnipotence is 8 songs in 46 minutes and the songs were longer than average death metal tunes, especially for that time period.  Opener “Thoughts” is still one of my fave songs from that time period.  Opening with a monstrous blast beat with Dying Fetus influenced vocals especially the low end Gallagher type of vocals.  After the brutal blast the song gets into a super cool slow down with awesome plucky bass guitar plucking all over the place.  The song approach gets into some more technical moments with some poly-rhythms, then the song picks up pace and right into the ferocious blasting with awesome vocal tones and growls.  Still one of my favorite death metal songs of all time.  The band unafraid of tossing in a guitar solo as well, with one getting tossed in, just to lop your stinking head off for good measure.

“A Level Higher” is a great example of some of the off the wall type of shit I spoke about at the beginning.  Opening with a slow heavy riff and then the drums come in with some weird vocals tones.  More of a spoken word/crooning style.  It’s downright odd.  The musicianship is excellent, the song heavy, but the weird vocals patterns – at the time seemed out of place.  Still to this day, the tones are odd-but original as all hell.  Then more of the dual Dying Fetus vocal style comes in and it’s excellent.  The song has excellent atmospheric guitar riffing and then the crooning vocal style is dropped in over the double bass, and then the lower gutturals take center stage and are just flawless.  More guitar soloing, tricky signature time changes.  This song sums up the all over the place style of Wicked Innocence.  “The Greys” opens with a Human Remains vibe with the weird guitar sounds, then into the double bass and those guttural vocals come on in and the song gradually picks up the pace with stop n start blast beats, drum rolls, solos, atmospherics and brutal technical precision.

The remastering is excellent.  Louder and clearer.  The guitar sound and drums punches the gut harder and the bass guitar sound sounds better than before.  The digipak folds out nice and is super glossy.  Nice graphics with pictures and most of all – lyrics.  This is certainly a welcome addition.  Super nice reissue Burning Dogma Records!  One of the weirdest and most original albums is finally back in print.  Wicked Innocence’s Omnipotence is just an incredible listening experience which stretches the listener’s ears to the max and this is an essential classic.

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