Land Of Frost is a new release documenting some of the early Darkthrone demos and a rehersal from 1999. There have been many other boots of this material like True Legends In Black, Evil Past, the even more recently released Return To Ultima Thule LP. Also the manufacturers could have included other material like the "A New Dimension" demo from 1988. This release does have an advantage over others because very good cassette sources were used for a majority of the release. There are no drop outs nor hiss giving a very clear and enjoyable aural picture of the very early Darkthrone.
The first part of this title is their very first demo as Darkthrone. "Land Of Frost" dates from March 1988 and features Gylve on drums and vocals, Ivar on guitar, Dag on bass and the mysterious Anders Risberget on guitar. Three of the five tracks are instrumentals and it sounds exactly what it is: a couple of teenagers trying to figure out exactly what they want to do. The commonly accepted wisdom is that Darkthrone began playing black metal, switched to technical death metal and then went back to playing "Unholy Norwegian black metal" about 1991. This demo shows that isn't completely true. The songs show they were strongly influenced by Carcass, Autopsy, Metallica, Slayer and Celtic Frost. Some of the songs like "Day Of The Dead" sounds like it was assembled almost at random, with black metal passages being interrupted with Metallica style strumming.
The 1999 rehearsal track, "God Of Disturbance And Fiction" dates to the Ravishing Grimness sessions and is unfinshed. It first appeared on the Demo LP and is a very fast song with very evil vocals in the classic Darkthrone vein in very good quality. It is obviously unfinished and seems to end as soon as it begins. The "Thulcandra" demo dates to just before the Soulside Journey era and is very heavy death metal, exploring the complex almost jazz-like structures of their later songs.
The "Cromlech" demo was recorded in December, 1989 and lead to their signing by Peaceville. All of the songs featured here were re-recorded for their debut classic and sound very similar to the finished product. It sounds very good for a demo but is missing "Iconoclasm Sweeps Cappadocia". This release could have been more definitive if it featured all of the demos complete and also included their short July 1988 "A New Dimension" promotape. Hopefully someday a release will come out that will also feature the Black Death demo which was Darkthrone in 1986 before Nocturno Culto joined the band. Land Of Frost is limited to 666 copies and is a competent but by no means complete collection of some very interesting Darkthrone material.
