Just as STIGMA DIABOLICUM became THORNS, Snorre W. Ruch and Harald Eilertsen recorded the cult rehearsal Grymyrk on this day in 1991, it soon - unintentionally - spread through trading circles:
...that was the tape that was supposed to be just for the members of THORNS to rehearse to and to listen to in order to learn the songs because we were spread all across Norway. [Bård G.] Faust was living in Lillehammer and our vocalist Marius [Vold] was living in Oslo, so we sent them tapes instead of bringing them over to rehearse. These tapes were spread through the underground and became famous all over the world. It's very strange!
- Snorre W. Ruch / Thorns interview, Voices from the Darkside
Two further demos followed in 1992; Trøndertun and The Thule Tape, the only demo with the lineup mentioned above.
After a while THORNS moved together in an apartment in Oslo to get things more organized and to rehearse and to write songs and stuff like that. So I lived in Oslo for 6 months. But nothing happened! We didn't get a place to rehearse so the members didn't spend any time writing songs or lyrics or anything. So I thought I had to do everything by myself and I wasn't very happy with that so I joined MAYHEM. And after a while I took the THORNS material with me into MAYHEM, that was the idea. But then things in MAYHEM became not so good either so I just took things from Heist and worked for myself for a couple of years and then I kinda got tired of all the music stuff and I went into creating sleep. And then Satyr came by and wanted to release the old THORNS demos and stuff like that, and also he wanted me to start writing music again. And then it started rolling again.
- Snorre W. Ruch / Thorns interview, Voices from the Darkside