Are there foodies of the metal genre? It seems like a contradiction because metal should mainly sound hard and brutal. But if this club exists then the American Cynic is their band. This trio, which used several singers in the past, has been going its own unpredictable path since the 1990s. Their 1993 debut Focus merged death metal (complete with grunt vocals) with jazz rock and gained legendary
… status over the years among, er, gourmets. Successor Traced In Air did not appear until fifteen years later and made fans from the very start sigh that Cynic was now more progressive than metal. But also on the third album Kindly Bent To Free Us thrash metal can be heard, especially in the complex guitar riffs and dizzying tempi. Only now this is completed with the lyrical and almost vulnerable vocals of singer / guitarist Paul Masvidal. There is also a lot of slowing down in dreamy pieces and even let loose in fusion-like passages. Yet Cynic always sounds pointy and the music never gets bogged down in empty complexity. With the strong Kindly Bent To Free Us, Cynic is somewhere between Voivod and Riverside. (MR)more
