I suppose I don’t have to introduce you to these guys as Chicago’s USURPER have been around for quite some time now and already established themselves in the underground with a bunch of cool releases. After being with Head Not Found and Necropolis Records, Earache have picked them up now and to shorten the time until the release of their new album they simply re-issued "Necronemesis" and "Visions From The Gods". Can’t really tell you if they differ in any way from the original formats as I didn’t own them before, but if you originally missed out on them, you should make sure to give them a listen now! Steven already reviewed "Necronemesis" back then, so I won’t go into detail on that one here once more (apart from some little additional facts such as the very cool cover from SLAUGHTER’s ‘Tales Of The Macabre’ and the guest vocals from KING DIAMOND on the titletrack and ABSU’s Proscriptor on ‘Full Metal Maelstron’!). "Visions From The Gods" on the other hand is a cool collection of rare material, including their legendary 1994 four song demo (which also gave this compilation its title), a different recording of ‘Soulstalker’ (which originally appeared on the "Roots III" compilation), a demo version of ‘Anno Satanas’, the KING DIAMOND cover ‘Charon’, two leftovers from the "Skeletal Season" sessions and a very raw, live bootleg recording of ‘Warriors Of Iron And Rust’ from their show in Strassbourg, France on November 25, 2000. Lyrics to all the songs are included and the coverart looks kinda cool as well, so all USURPER maniacs or everyone else into their CELTIC FROST kinda Death / Black / Thrash mayhem after all can finally pick them up (again) more easily over here in Europe.