Criterion was formed in 1992 by John and Kim. We started out as a Metallica cover band with two other members and played for aprox 2 years. In 1994 Kim got his head up for Chuck Schuldiner from the band DEATH. Kim started to write our own material and suddenly we had gone into the genre of Death-Metal.
The other two members didn't have the right skills to join us further, so we got Kenneth and Rene. Now the band was complete and things started to happen. We wrote more material, recorded a demo and started to play gigs around in Norway. Stuff like school, military, girlfriends distracted the bands further development. But in 1997 Kim got the idea, “Let's study music”, so the band went to school for a year and got the skills we have today.

In 2000 we recorded a new demo and sent it to several record labels, but got no record deal. We sat down and analyzed the demo and came to the conclusion. “We don't have our own sound or thing, if you could call it that. Kim started to write new material the 2 next years and in 2002 we recorded a new demo. The demo “Blackened Memories“ was a killer, we listened to it and it was the first time everybody in the band liked all the riffs, vocal lines, solos ect, ect. This demo had to be our breakthrough.

In 2003 we tried again, sent the demo to several record labels and one day Kim got in touch with Carsten and MORBID RECORDS. They wanted to give us a record deal. In august 2004 we recorded a full length album.

We're ready to conquer the world with aggressive, brutal Norwegian Death-Metal. See ya out there.

(Source: Official Site)