 |
|
DESCRIPTION FROM CRUCIAL BLAST:
It's interesting to me that one of the weirdest death metal bands of the 90's came out of Salt Lake City, and it's easy to wonder whether their pursuit of absolute chaos and insanity was at all informed by the ultra-conservative city where they were located. Although they enjoyed a small cult following during their existence, Wicked Innocence never achieved any widespread popularity, and in the eight years or so since the band last surfaced with a new recording, they've slipped into tech-death obscurity, sought out primarily by death metal fans investigating the weirder fringes of the genre, like myself. To be honest, I had heard about the band back when they were around, but didn't check them out until years later just because of their name. When I started to see them being mentioned in the same breath as Gorguts and Immolation though, it was time to check them out. Once I got into their catalog, I realized that Wicked Innocence (despite their glammy name) played some incredibly complicated and chaotic death metal, that became more and more bizarre and convoluted with each album they released in the 1990's. Their debut album Omnipotence on Napalm Records is considered a minor classic amongst fans of weirdo tech-death, but nothing comes close to the jaw-dropping audacity of their 1999 follow-up, Worship, which was released on the Italian grind label Headfucker Records. This of course is the same label that released the debut from their pals in Cephalic Carnage, and you can hear a kinship in the mental death/grind that these bands were developing around the same time. Musically, Worship traverses the outer avant-garde reaches of technical death metal where bands like Gorguts, Cephalic Carnage, Immolation, Demilich and Atheist intersect, with tons of chaotic, skronky riffs that often slip all the way into Obscura levels of dissonance and harshness, abrupt breaks into massive stoner rock riffage a la their pals in Cephalic Carnage, INSANE drumming with lots of bizarre counter-intuitive rhythms and super-fast fills flying all over the place, and some obvious mutant jazz-fusion influences that seep into the kaleidoscopic chords/riffs employed by the guitarists and the extremely complicated arrangements. Lots of overtly weird shit pops up throughout the album, ranging from the Indian flutes and acoustic balladry on "G.O.D." to the insane combination of funk breaks and odd tribal percussion with brutal off-time death metal on "Jealous And Self-Conscious". If they had just kept it at that, a blasting assault of dissonant, quirky death metal, then a lot of death metal fans would probably have been able to get on board with this album when it came out; however, the vocals are so fucking nuts, and so un-death-metal, this ended up either going way over the heads of most death metallers, or (more likely) just totally pissing them off. See, the singer lets out plenty of gutteral death-belches and puking vokills, but he mixes them up with this weird, crooning singing style that's completely out of place, but at the same time makes this sound wonderfully nuts, as if the singer is rapidly tuning into multiple personalities, babbling in a soulful wail one moment, then vomiting black bile a split second later. It certainly doesn't sound like this was a play for a wider audience; one listen to the completely fucked-up death metal these guys played proves that. If anything, it just weirds out their tech-death exponentially. Imagine a cross between Immolation and Obscura-era Gorguts and Cephalic Carnage, but with a singer channeling Eddie Vedder, Serj Tankian, and Mike Patton alongside his litany of bestial, bowel-rupturing growls. One of the most fucked sounding death metal albums ever, and a BIG favorite around here. Since Headfucker Records has been defunct for awhile, this album has been increasingly hard to track down; I picked up a handful from one of my Italian distributors recently, and it's now available through C-Blast for fans of truly weird and "out" tech-death.
© CRUCIAL BLAST
|
|
THIS IS A NEW, UNPLAYED ITEM. Please note that for LP vinyl orders, we usually remove the vinyl from the jacket prior to
shipment in order to avoid seam splits or any other kind sleeve/jacket damage that might occur during transit. This may
require that we open the shrinkwrap on the record in order to carefully remove the vinyl from the inside of the jacket (if
the record was originally shrinkwrapped). Feel free to contact us with any questions regarding this policy.
Crucial Blast is an independant underground label, online shop and micro-press specializing in cutting edge, transgressive,
experimental heavy music and related cultural artifacts, with a particular focus on avant-metal, black noise/industrial, dark
ambience, infernal psychedelia, and hardcore improv/free-jazz. You'll find everything from art-damaged European metalcore to
amplifier-exploding psychedelic drones to earth-shaking post-Ayler destructo-jazz in our listings, which we update roughly
every two weeks with both brand new releases and rare finds from the vaults.
ALL REVIEWS FROM CRUCIAL BLAST ARE THE SOLE AND EXCLUSIVE PROPERTY OF CRUCIALBLASTSHOP.NET., AND ARE NOT TO BE REPRINTED,
REWRITTEN, OR BORROWED IN ANY WAY, SHAPE OR FORM WITHOUT EXPRESS PERMISSION FROM CRUCIAL BLAST. COPYRIGHT 2000-2013.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
::: SHIPPING AND PAYMENT INFO :::
Payment for your order is expected within SEVEN DAYS from the end of auction/buy it now purchase. Our turnaround time for
orders is listed at 3 days, but we usually ship within 24 hours of receiving your order.
WE DO COMBINE SHIPPING ON MULTIPLE ITEMS ! PLEASE NOTE: In order to have us combine shipping, you MUST wait
for us to send you a revised invoice for your order after you have clicked on BUY IT NOW for ALL of the items you want.
Please contact us if you have any questions about this.
ATTENTION INTERNATIONAL (NON-U.S.) CUSTOMERS: Recent changes in the US postal system rates for packages going out of the US have raised the cost for sending small parcels internationally; you'll get a better value for your shipping cost if you order a minimum of 2-3 items at a time. Remember to let us send you a revised invoice for combined shipping for multiple items before sending your payment.
SHIPPING TIME: We will generally ship your order the same day that we receive your payment for the order. If there are any
issues or potential delays with your order, we will contact you ASAP to let you know.
Don't forget to check out all of our other CRUCIAL BLAST-approved avant-metal/black industrial/trasngressive art items and
releases that are available in our Ebay store and on auction. We also have many out-of-print and rare items available in our
catalog as well...
|
| CRUCIAL BLAST: An online shop specializing in
experimental metal, black industrial, black psychedelia, noise rock, dark ambience, and other forms of cutting edge and
left-field heaviness. We also carry a carefully curated selection of books and other printed materials from the realms of
black surrealism and transgressive thought.
|
 |
Hit us up with an email
if you have any questions.
Click here to check out
all of the other 3,500 + items we have to offer from the realms of subterranean metal, transgressive art, experimental
heaviness, and blackened industrial... |
|
