Track By Tracks: Cryoshock - The Cold New Regime (2024)

1. Shock Troops:

Shock Troops is kind of a mid-tempo track, not super fast but still energetic, and we selected this track as the opener precisely because it is a bit of an average track for the album. It is also a very catchy song.

The lyrics have a war theme, a shock-and-awe style armed assault. The lyrics are very carefully tailored to match the flow of the music, and the transitions between different parts of the song.

2. Operation Earthworm:

Operation Earthworm is a predominantly fast-paced track, but with a slower chorus. The song is about an army division ordered to dig a huge hole in an attempt to reach all the way down to Hell, to unleash evil forces upon the world. It is basically a twist on the stories of how the Third Reich was searching for holy treasures.

3. Mighty Winter:

When nuclear war spreads dust particles throughout the atmosphere, it is believed that they could potentially block out the sun to the extent that it would lower Earth's temperature, and thus put the world in a state of nuclear winter. There is a theory that such an event is what will come to fulfill the prophecies of Fimbulwinter in Norse mythology, i.e. a three-year-long winter leading up to Ragnarök, the end of the world. That winter is what's behind the phrase "a thousand days of night" in the song lyrics.

4. Between the Trenches:

Between the Trenches is a fast and furious track about a soldier who thrives in the heat of battle, and puts himself in the line of fire to experience the adrenaline rush, with bullets and shrapnel piercing the air.

5. Breath of the Great Lung:

There is a physics theory that roughly suggests that after the Big Bang, the universe will expand for a very long time, but that the expansion eventually slows down, halts, and then reverses until all matter is once again united. Then the entire process repeats, over and over again. And with every cycle, everything in the universe is destroyed and then created again. Like a huge lung, drawing slow, deep breaths. Most scientists don't believe this theory to be valid, but it is still a fascinating concept.

6. Genocide Protocol:

A Motörhead-esque track, with lyrics dealing with biological and chemical warfare and man-made diseases.

7. 535:

The winter of 535/536 had massive historic significance, as historians and archeologists agree that it was the most severe episode of climatic cooling in the Northern Hemisphere in the last 2000 years. It is believed that ashes from a series of volcano eruptions covered the atmosphere with particles, creating a situation similar to nuclear winter, although instead called volcanic winter. This in turn resulted in what can basically be described as a minor ice age. The temperature decreased all over, causing crops to fail, people to starve, and things to just become miserable in general. This winter likely inspired the prophecy of Fimbulwinter, the great winter, in Norse mythology. So conceptually, this song obviously goes hand in hand with "Great Winter".

8. The Fist of Ares:

Another war-themed song. "The Fist of Ares" is a metaphor for a rocket launcher, a weapon capable of immense destruction.

9. Woes of the Terminarch:

The terminals is the last of our species, roaming the earth alone, contemplating his destiny. Is there any meaning to life as he is the last one? And if he takes his own life, will it even make a difference?

10. The Cold New Regime:

The Cold New Regime deals with the theory of the singularity and explores a world where artificial intelligence is the ruling class. Here, human life has no value in itself. Machines have no compassion, but also no hatred or spite. They are truly indifferent, truly cold.

11. Chaos Engine:

Chaos Engine has a chaotic theme indeed, and a rather abstract one at that. The song is based on a mental picture of radiation-sick freaks, worshipping chaos in a state of rapture. The song title is taken from an old computer game, although there is no relation beyond the name.