CYNIC’s continual state of development has met its share of challenges over the years, hurdles that threatened to dismantle the entity’s forward surge. Yet through hurricanes, breakups, and assorted acrimony both personal and existential, it remains inspired to create. Their name is synonymous with what it means to be truly progressive in music.
CYNIC’s top-tier performance acumen and cerebral/spiritual/yogic themes finds them inhabiting a corner of the musical spectrum all their own. Their Venn diagram shows intersections with death metal, prog rock, thrash metal, experimental, new age, jazz fusion, and a myriad of other sonic expressions!
Debut album, Focus (1993), is a certified classic. Although that era ended with transformation into the short-lived Portal, and then a further splinter toward Aeon Spoke, CYNIC’s reunion-era has found them embraced in a way that proves how ahead of the times they were in the ‘90s. Through monuments such as the Traced in Air (2008) and Kindly Bent to Free Us (2014) albums, the Carbon-Based Anatomy and Re-Traced EPs, and a surprising rebirth with the “Humanoid” single of 2018, the CYNIC legacy remains untarnished. Yet early in the creation cycle for their fourth full-length album, they experienced horrible events that tested the entity’s resolve.
The year 2020 will go down in history as a tremendously difficult time for the global human population. For the CYNIC family, the struggle was not restricted to a pandemic. It was two utterly senseless losses that threw the band’s immediate concerns into the background: the premature deaths of drummer Sean Reinert in January, at age 48, and bassist Sean Malone in December, at age 50, were shocking and unthinkable. Reinert, a founding CYNIC member since formation in 1988, was highly influential to a multitude of young drummers. His work on 1993’s Focus and Death’s watershed 1991 album, Human, found him sculpting extreme technical metal with a jazz fusion-inspired approach. Now taken for granted, that approach to the instrument and the genre was undoubtedly pioneered in large part by Reinert. Though parting with CYNIC in 2015, his imprint on CYNIC is inescapable. The death of Sean Malone dealt another horrible layer of tragedy to CYNIC’s 2020.
As of 2021, the future of CYNIC is unclear. Does Ascension Codes mark their final phase of growth? Surely the music finds them laying out a most ambitious trail of spiritual sonic travel, but to call any CYNIC album “ambitious” is redundant. They are, by their very nature, an ambitious band. Yet Ascension Codes is a remarkably far-reaching work. Its nine main songs are infused with explosions of color and energy! The struggle to attain ascension is as important as ascension itself. And after much searching, CYNIC have again achieved oneness with the numinous. At a time of possible exit for the entity, Ascension Codes is CYNIC reaching a previously-unknown state of enlightenment!
Style: Progressive Metal
Links:
www.instagram.com/cynic_official
www.facebook.com/Cynicofficialpage
www.youtube.com/cynicdocumentary
http://cyniconline.com
www.instagram.com/paulmasvidal
www.facebook.com/paulmasvidal
http://masvidalien.com
Producers: Paul Masvidal / Warren Riker
Mixer: Warren Riker
Mastering studio and engineer: Georgetown Masters / Andrew Mendelson
Recording line-up:
Paul Masvidal – Guitars, vocals, lyrics
Dave Mackay – Bass synthesizer, keyboards
Matt Lynch – Drumscapes
Guest musicians:
Guitar Codes Artifacts: Dark
Voice Code Activations: Anrita Melchizedek
Reptilian Collective: Max Phelps
TWO Soloscape: Plini
Crystal Bowl Attunements: Michael Devin
Light Language Teachers: Amy Correia ^ Joshua Leon
DLB MetaTerrestrial: Ezekial Kaplan
Cover artwork artist: The Landing ^ Triptych ^ Martina Hoffmann
Photographer: Katerina Gorbacheva bxw
Pre-sales SoM: https://redirect.season-of-mist.com/Cynic
Pre-sales Cynic: https://cynic.travelling-merchant.com
Album formats:
CD Digipak
Digital
Gatefold Double vinyl in various colours
Picture vinyl
Cassette
