CRYONIC, Evil Mind  (2007, Swedmetal)

The skull:
It’s like the dudes in Cryonic stumbled on this image after walking by Hellyeah HQ and found various discarded album cover design in the dumpster out back. One look at this ice blue bad boy and that was it: Cryonic had a mascot. Cinoyrc the Evil Mind (of Blue Flames), arise! They’re ready to take over the world now, they are.

The music:
Happy Happy Helloween all up in this joint! Germany’s speed metal masters are clearly a prime influence on this Swedish band, as are other, equally obvious bands such as Blind Guardian and Edguy. Which kinda means Cryonic sound a lot like Heavenly or Dreamland and similar other power metal bands several degrees removed from the root source. They’re fine at what they’re doing, but could probably use a more ballsy attack, since their AOR-ish elements (“Coldblood”) aren’t refined enough to carry them into that realm. But then increasing the aggression factor wouldn’t disguise the fact that this is pretty mediocre stuff. It’s not offensively mediocre, and would satisfy any not-exactly-discriminating power metal fan, but it does make you wish, for the 6000th time, that Lost Horizon could have put out at least one more album. (Fun fact: Cryonic’s vocalist goes by the handle of Bigswede.)

— Friar Wagner