Cronica

A chronicle out of Jaworzno

Cronica came together in 2014 in Jaworzno, a Silesian town better known for coal than for hurdy-gurdies. The founding four were Dariusz Dąbek on vocals and electric guitar, Dawid Dubiel on drums, Magdalena Hałas on violin and Remigiusz Majcher on guitar. Within a short stretch the group had grown to seven, adding Adrianna Kania on hurdy-gurdy, keyboards and vocals, Katarzyna Karoń on vocals and transverse flute, and Jakub Karkoszka on bass. Maciej Rzyman took over the bass chair across 2015 and 2016 and has held it since.

The name sets out the method. Rather than working from a generic pagan songbook, the band builds lyrics out of medieval chronicle material, regional legend and philosophical argument, and sings a good deal of it in Old Polish and in regional dialects. The instrumentation runs transverse flute, sopilka and hurdy-gurdy — and, for the first decade, violin — against a conventional metal rhythm section. The first result was the EP Świt historii in 2014, recorded while the line-up was still settling.

Two albums and a guest from Decapitated

Na tej ziemi, released on 6 October 2016, fixed the band's shape. Nine tracks run close to an hour, several of them past seven minutes: the title song opens, a self-titled piece called Cronica runs to exactly seven, and two Scandinavian ballads, Herr Holger and Herr Mannelig, sit alongside originals including Nawie, Śpiący rycerze and Wilk. The CD pressing sold out; the album stays available digitally through the band's own Bandcamp page, where the self-description is about pairing heavy guitar with melodies drawn from medieval ballads, sailing songs and legend.

A single, Lustro, followed in 2018. Then on 31 August 2020, with live work shut down, the band put out Dla korzeni, four minutes and forty-four seconds with Rafał Rasta Piotrowski of Decapitated guesting — an odd pairing on paper, since Decapitated deal in technical death metal rather than anything folk-adjacent.

Ukony arrived on 5 February 2022: ten tracks, mixed and mastered by Tomasz Zed Zalewski, with the Piotrowski collaboration folded into the running order. The title translates roughly as obligations, and the lyrics work through Slavic demonology and human conduct on that frame. Polish folk coverage at the time read it as a markedly heavier and more guitar-driven record than its predecessor, with growls and screams from the lead vocal set against female singing and the hurdy-gurdy, violin and flute parts. It was entered in the Wirtualne Gęśle folk album poll for 2022.

Stages shared, members lost

Between 2017 and 2019 the band worked steadily through Polish clubs and open-air events and crossed into the Czech Republic and Germany. They played Pol'and'Rock in 2019 and the Pyrkon convention, and have shared bills with Arkona, Grai, Satana Kozel, Radogost and Percival Schuttenbach. The pandemic stopped all of it between 2020 and 2021; the Ukony Tour in February 2022 restarted it.

The line-up has turned over repeatedly. Majcher left in 2019. Magdalena Hałas, the founding violinist, departed in 2024, and the vocalist Marta Janas left in 2025, leaving a six-piece: Dąbek, Kania, Rzyman, Dubiel, Kat Poręba on vocals and shamanic drum, and Jakub Niżyński on guitar. The violin chair has stayed empty since Hałas went, which puts the melodic load on hurdy-gurdy, flute and guitar.

The tenth anniversary was marked on 14 June 2025 in the Sala Gotycka at Stary Klasztor in Wrocław, a bill shared with Runika, which turned ten the same year, and with the Slavic folk metal band Velesar as special guest. Doors were at 6.30pm and tickets started at 73.78 złoty.

Niebieska Iskra and the September announcement

2026 opened with headline club work of their own. On 11 April the band topped a three-act night at Klub Gwarek in Kraków, with the Lithuanian group Ūkanose and the Polish project Ariadne's Thread below them, promoted by the AGH students' and graduates' foundation.

The larger development came in September. Cronica and Zenek Grabowski released a joint single, Niebieska Iskra, covered by the Polish music press on 25 and 29 September 2026. Grabowski has said he became a follower of the band after hearing Ukony and after the first concert the two acts played together, and that the track grew out of the decision to tour as a pair rather than the other way round. Dąbek called the session straightforward fun and said the piece would be performed on every night of the joint run.

That run is titled Z prądem rzeki płyną tylko zdechłe ryby — only dead fish swim with the current — and goes from 1 October to 28 November 2026, 21 concerts in 21 Polish cities, among them Gdańsk, Warsaw, Łódź, Wrocław, Lublin, Kraków, Poznań, Szczecin and Białystok. Polish coverage describes it as the largest tour in the band's history. Eighteen of the dates are on sale.

The autumn routing

The schedule is club-scale and clustered on weekends: Sulęcin on 10 October, Wrocław on the 11th, Kutno on the 17th, Lublin on the 18th, Kołobrzeg on the 23rd, Chojnice on the 24th, Poznań on the 25th, Sosnowiec on the 30th and Kraków on the 31st, with further dates running into November. Listings carry Grabowski's name at the top with Cronica named alongside rather than beneath.

There is no single fixed opener. A local or regional act is slotted in at most stops: Chałtcore in Wrocław, Insekt in Lublin, Miyasis in both Chojnice and Poznań, Sick Saints in Sosnowiec and AntyRefleks in Kraków. It is a model that suits rooms of a few hundred and keeps the bill different from one night to the next.