Crionic The Land Which Once Were Review [Lp+Cd]

…over the (funeral) moon about the fact that FOAD Records is releasing one of my favorite demos on vinyl! Truly a lost gem… This recording kind of created their own land within a very crowded metal world at the time, an exciting epic introvert world of its own

This is what was declared by Fenriz of the Darkthrone on December 1, 2023 regarding the re-proposal on vinyl of the only existing record by the thrashers Cryonicsa band born in 1985 in Risskov, a district of Aarhus, in Denmark and dissolved shortly after but in time to publish the demo the following year The Land Which Once Werehighly acclaimed at the time by the hordes of aficionados followers of Metallica, Exodus And Destruction.

FOAD , as usual, offers its thirty-three albums – in just 200 copies on black vinyl and 100 on blue vinyl – in official form, therefore with the group’s approval, adding a bonus CD containing the same four-track demo followed by two sessions – rehearsal 1986-1987 – containing some unreleased pieces. Accompanying everything is a maxi booklet of sixteen pages measuring 21 x 30 cm including several beautiful photos of the group, the lyrics of the demo pieces and the related scans, liner notes, extracts from specialized newspapers and fanzines and the entire writing written by Fenriz – occupying an entire side – in reference both to Crionic and to their 1986 demotape but above all to the beginnings of Darkthrone and his continuous search for innovation in the extreme field.

When reviewing the photos of the Cryonics it is impossible not to think of Metallica, when they were still Metallica, hard, ferocious and violent. The four Danes, Bjarne Jorgensen (drums), Christian “Kesse” Provstgaard (Guitar), Thomas “Tom” G. Brandt (vocals, guitar) e Lars “Klas” Knudsen (bottom) are in fact wearing Metallica T-shirts and Slayernot surprisingly and the name of the band came from a line of the lyrics of ‘Trapped Under Ice’: “No release from my cryonic state“.

The primordial nucleus of Crionic, in June 1985, was composed only of Kesse, Tom and Klas who were joined in the autumn of the same year by Bjarne, ex Warchain. The Land Which Once Were was recorded at the Fanny Studio from 27 to 29 December 1986 and Monster Vengsgard took care of the production phases. Their ‘Sneaking Disease‘ was later published on the compilation Thrash Metal Attack II (New Renaissance Records), in 1988.

Interesting to scroll through the memories of Tom Brandt regarding i Cryonics, today, through the text written in his own hand and published on page two of the booklet. As well as underlining – dutifully – how good the demo sounds on vinyl The Land Which Once Were after the improvement operations carried out by FOAD at the Toxic Basement Studio in Milan, the guitarist/singer retraces the dreams that populated the thoughts of the four of them, budding musicians with the idea of ​​conquering the world one day. It didn’t really go that way, Tom himself admits, despite him Hosanna collected from their demo and strangely makes no mention of why the group lasted so short. What matters, in his words, is that:

we are proud to have been a part of all the fuzz, a part of the pioneering of the Danish thrash metal scene and making our little contribution

Even musically, the four tracks included within The Land Which Once Were they mainly report to Metallica of times gone by, although Tom’s voice is a mix of that of Tom G. Warrior of the Celtic Frost And Flemming Ronsdorf of the Artillery.

Return to immerse yourself in thrashone – because at that moment thrash was thrash and that’s it, without various derivations – from the mid-eighties is priceless, even if it was proposed by four Danish boys with high hopes later thwarted by the harsh events of life.

Stefano “Steven Rich” Ricetti