USURPER

Americans are the most innocent and naive people on earth. They can watch television for decades without suspecting the existence of subliminal messaging. Eat at McDonald's and simultaneously fight the obesity epidemic. Finally, they can take a dying hardcore genre, solder on a few trendy gimmicks, call the homemade radio-horror "nu metal," and actually LISTEN to it with gleeful squealing! Perhaps the demanding and inherently critical European mind simply cannot comprehend this. And while the last Dream Theater types still roam New England, today we're going to talk about an entirely different creature... Manowar-esque Chicago thrash performed by USURPER is, on one hand, a concentrate of musical honesty, and on the other, an utterly generic latex-wrapped affair that even a seasoned musical ear finds extremely difficult to latch onto. On one side of the scale — excellent sound, flawless playing technique (after all, this is already their fifth studio record!), a hand-drawn cover in the classic '80s vein. On the other — cultivation of a true-metal (read: Manowar-style) concept, worn-out cliches, supposedly "evil" lyrics akin to those penned by KING DIAMOND in the early days of MERCYFUL FATE. USURPER probably deeply regret that their lot was not to rattle ammo belts on the same stage as VENOM but rather today, when all the top records in the genre — with rare exceptions — gather dust on the shelves of 40-year-old fans. I say "with rare exceptions" because comparing "Cryptobeast" to, say, "Enemy Of God" by KREATOR, you understand from the first notes that the latter will become a sought-after rarity in ten years, while the cryptobeast, no matter how much you groom it, will hardly earn a place in metal history. In conclusion: worth a listen, sure. But buying it? You'd be better off going to McDonald's.