Whilst never quite reaching the death metal premier league, Oppressor certainly earned their stripes in the early 90's, touring with many a death metal luminary and releasing some pretty solid albums before losing members Adam Zadel, Tim King and Tom Schofield to the first incarnation of US hard rock chart bothers Soil.

This release culls the best tracks from those albums and, together with a couple of covers and a nice bonus DVD featuring numerous live clips and interviews, makes for a nice retrospective of this Chicago troupe's brief career in the realms of death metal.

Oppressor trod a similar path to Deicide in their heyday and favoured a sound not a million miles away from Hate Eternal or Suffocation, mixing density of tone with a fair smattering of technical riffing and guttural vocals. All good stuff, but the real gems here are the two cover versions, the second of which is 'Over The Mountain' which is unusual in so far as it's very faithful to the Ozzy original except it has traditional death metal vocals, but you really do have to hear their version of Motley Crue's 'Looks That Kill' - Vince Neil never sounded this good!!!  Worth the price of admission on it's own.

If you've got a few pennies to spare this is a nice little good value package with plenty to keep the discerning death metal fan happy.

 www.myspace.com/oppressormusic