J-Man After changing their name from Black Death to Darkthrone in late 1987, these Norwegian extreme metal legends quickly released this cassette demo in February of 1988. Land of Frost is one of those late eighties' extreme metal demos that prides itself with a lo-fi recording quality, utterly intolerable mix, and underdeveloped compositions - hearing this demo from a listener's perspective gives the impression that it was more of a way to for Darkthrone to jot down some of their ideas than to create an actually enjoyable listening experience. Land of Frost is only for the die-hard Darkthrone fanbase, and is nearly guaranteed to be a miserable experience for everyone else.

Darkthrone is best known as a black metal band, but their first album (Soulside Journey) is actually a terrific Scandinavian death metal release. As one would probably expect considering the band's musical progression, this early demo release is more of a death metal one than a black metal ditto, in spite of its horrendous production and raw aesthetics. The fat doom/death riffs are there along with the growling vocals, but they are so obscured by the lo-fi sound quality that it's nearly impossible to tell what's going on. The vocals are also marred by a strange echoing quality that make the demo even more unlistenable - factor in the sloppy musicianship, and it's fairly easy to reach the conclusion that Land of Frost isn't the most successful demo release out there.

Though there are a few interesting ideas contained throughout this demo tape, they are so poorly presented that it's difficult to get too excited about Land of Frost. As a medium for Darkthrone to quickly record their musical ideas at this time, this is a decent release - as a redeeming listening experience, it's totally unnecessary. This is for the collectors and die-hard fans only, and 1 star is the most I can give in this case. Thankfully Darkthrone would demonstrate in 1991 that they do actually know how to create amazing death metal music.