Artist: Cryonic Temple
Label: Metal Heaven
Release: 2008
Length: 51:38
Rating: 4.6/5
Cryonic Temple, yet another bunch of Swedes celebrating their 12th year together, are dropping “Immortal”, their fourth studio album overall. Three and a half years after “In Thy Power”, the guys have come through a radical lineup overhaul. Three new members joined up, which left only guitarists Leif Collin and Esa Ahonen from the original crew. No wonder that after all the hell they’ve been through, they started believing in their own immortality and named the album “Immortal”.
Still, all that reshuffling has clearly brought the band peace, freshness and, most importantly, a new creative drive. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. And because the guys believed in it and stuck it out, it has definitely paid off. “Immortal” is the payoff of hard work and perseverance. It boasts eleven varied tracks marked by the brazen, infectious catchiness of bombastic melody, the kind their power metal vision understands so well.
Cryonic Temple are no happy little elves singing about victories over slain demons, thugs and all the other pests tormenting the honest world. Nope. These guys build a much more drastic mood: they’re wicked, prone to flirting with the occult, and there are a few verses of the typical confessional kind too. What it all has in common is that Cryonic Temple are set on doom, spinning an atmosphere that’s wrapped in black across the whole album, like the tolling of the bell on judgment day. And that’s the most appealing part. They touch on spheres we dodge in the real world and don’t like to think about, but when somebody else does it, it stirs up so much more curiosity, which in turn, riding on the wings of surrendering to Cryonic Temple’s music, pushes us into exactly that kind of thinking.
As players, Cryonic Temple combine an interesting mix of 1980s American speed metal logic, which they lean on especially in the hellish dictation of tempo in chosen rhythms and in places in the sinister riff rampage itself, which is full and wrecking. Over those riffs they lay thirds harmonies and can even “pre-pick” a melody above the riffs, which gives them a European accent (Standing Tall and Train of Destruction are examples), a bit like Running Wild or Gamma Ray, but only in fleeting pinches. Most of the tracks are cut off at the highest peak of scorching guitar lightning. But when you make it to As I Sleep, a phenomenal acoustic half-ballad awaits you, where the keyboards sneak into the background to great effect and build up the mood in the chorus. In the middle of this calm track sits the excellent, commanding, versatile, powerful vocal of new singer Magnus Thurin, polished in every register and used to the fullest. He’s one of the key elements behind the leap in quality that Cryonic Temple have definitely pulled off with “Immortal”. The vocal matters because the melodies he picks in the verses bring a big part of that doomy atmosphere touched by the classic American school, and the very lively production helps too, perfectly catching the band’s studio warm-up at just the right working temperature.
The closing Departure is an acoustic instrumental poem and a sort of extension of As I Sleep. Too bad Cryonic Temple didn’t leave the two “glued” together with a linking passage, because they’re incredibly compatible in melody and atmosphere.
The production kept that necessary liveliness and rawness that sparkles across the album and stands out right from the opening title track. It carries a slight “thrashy” accent in the main riff, which the band returns to later in the album (Time with its “Angel Dust” vibe, then Fight To Survive and Beg Me). The songs are adorned with dizzying twists, stitched together with witty transitional passages that string together different moods and so keep this release flowing with high dynamics (Freedom Calling). It’s highly listenable and soaked in a deeply tragic atmosphere, which makes it feel incredibly real, and you’ll also get plenty of enjoyment from the rich arsenal of witty guitar soloing. The track with the most pomp and the most captured mood swings on the album is Where Sadness Never Ends, which smells typically European in its melodic motifs (the guitar picking), with a gloomy, melancholic coating of old school American speed metal, which is how Cryonic Temple effectively keep their aggressive charm, metal fervor and relentlessness. The guys come very close to that again with the following track, Fear of the Rage.
Cryonic Temple are not just “another” power metal band. They walk the tri-point where American old school speed and archaic thrash metal meet with remarkable skill, pouring in a hefty dose of European heavy metal melody. The album doesn’t give in for even a moment to potential outbursts of pathos or naive, trivial formula. Sure, we’ve heard all this before, but it’s put together again in a way that feels truly real, the way only the magic of heavy metal can bring that reality back to life. At the bottom of the abyss of doom and agony, a new world is born! “immortal” is a prime example of fantastic recycling that has produced a top-quality heavy metal album, with which Cryonic Temple have finally matured and caught the right creative, confessional tempo. Here’s hoping for plenty more sequels like this in the future.
Lineup
Magnus Thurin – Vocals
Leif Collin – Guitars
Esa Ahonen – Guitars
Hans Karlin – Drums
Bjorn Svensson – Bass
Production
Cryonic Temple
Tracklist
1.Immortal
2.Standing Tall
3.Where Sadness Never Rests
4.Beg Me
5.Freedom Calling
6.Fear of the Rage
7.Time
8.Fight to Survive
9.Train of Destruction
10.As I Sleep
11.Departure
