Cynic: Traced in Air (2008)

1. “Nunc Fluens” – 2:56
2. “The Space for This” – 5:46
3. “Evolutionary Sleeper” – 3:35
4. “Integral Birth” – 3:53
5. “The Unknown Guest” – 4:13
6. “Adam’s Murmur” – 3:29
7. “King of Those Who Know” – 6:09
8. “Nunc Stans” – 4:13

Now I’ve stated somewhere around this blog before that my tastes are most firmly rooted in metal and progressive music. I love metal music; I love progressive music. What I love even more is progressive metal music done well. That is why whenever you see me listing my top favorite bands, Opeth and Dream Theater are usually in my top two, and the likes of Meshuggah and Tool in my top 5. I have a strange affinity for heavy, dark and epic music. You get heavy in metal, dark in most metal and some progressive, and lots of epic in progressive and some metal. In addition, in metal you get lots of intricate and technical musicianship, as well as a raw intensity you just don’t really find in other genres. In progressive music (nowadays), you get even more technical (albeit not necessarily intricate) musicianship, innovation, and a sense of discovery and wonder built into the arrangements and composition.

Despite my being in utter love with progressive metal, I gave up on finding too much music in the area. There’s good metal, there’s good progressive, but nine out of ten progressive metal bands are complete shit. They plug the progressive tag into their music by adding in some keyboards, half-assed “orchestra” or “classical” arrangements, lots of fast-played scales, dissonant chords, clean vocals, and seven to eight minute songs. I’m sorry, but that doesn’t cut it.

Progressive is a pretentious term intrinsically; there’s no escaping that, I suppose. But if you’re going to label your music with a pretentious tag, at least be able to back that up. You need to write music that makes sense. It doesn’t need to be technical–it needs to be smart. It needs to be mature. It needs to instill that feeling that you’re listening to something interesting and fresh (without needing to actually be fresh). Experiment, be daring and adventurous in your music, for god’s sake. When you start writing and playing technical music for technicality’s sake, you get today’s Yngwie Malsteem, and we all know how that turned out (in case you don’t know, he’s washed up now; even Mikael Åkerfeldt of Opeth agrees with me: Read his blog on Yngwie Malsteem).

This is where Cynic comes in. I went on a spree recently, getting all sorts of new music; mostly doom, death/doom, and some old progressive and progressive metal music. I was suggested Cynic as well when I was searching through progressive metal stuffs. I had heard of them when they supported Meshuggah on one of their past tours, and being from the Tampa Bay, Florida area, I had previously brushed them off as another run of the mill death metal band. This time I took them a bit more seriously and actually took a good listen to one of their albums.

Let me sum up the impression this album left on me after I’d finished listening through it in as few words as I can: “Holy fucking shit”. Now let me elaborate. This is an absolutely amazing album. It is one of the best metal albums I have ever heard. It is fun to listen to, it is refreshing, and it is unpredictable. Most impressive is the way the entire album comes together. Throughout your listen, nothing ever feels out of place, and the concept is delivered flawlessly. I’m not the biggest fan of innovation/new things. I prefer a solid and well-written album to one that goes out of its way to be “new” and “innovative”.

Traced in Air, however, innovates and tries new things without messing it up. It is an absolute wonder of an album. From the get go, you’re drawn in with a fast intro track that builds up tension with each passage. By the end, you’re on the edge of your seat before it abruptly tapers off and leads into the next track. From there, you’re on a journey. It pulls you through measure after measure of fast paced and heavy melodies. It is heavy in its intensity, not its speed or its tone. The musicianship is perfect. Cynic does not add in extra notes where they’re not needed. The guitars are intricate and balanced (Paul Masvidal, Tymon Kruidenier). You can actually hear the bass (Robin Zielhorst, Sean Malone). The drum work is perfectly fitting yet has a manic personality of its own (Sean Reinert). Traced in Air grabs a hold of you and doesn’t let you go until you reach the end.

Perhaps the most interesting part of this album is the vocal work. It predominantly uses clean vocals fed through a synthesizer of some kind. It gives the vocalist (Paul Masvidal) a robotic and sort of inhuman feel. While generally when the vocals do appear, they still hold the leading melody, this effect really brings the instruments to the forefront. The vocals become another instrument in the band that only happens to narrate, and you are more easily able to focus on the music as a whole.

The perhaps weakest part of the album are the death growls added in now and then to back up the clean vocals. They simply are not that strong. Handled by guitarist Tymon Kruidenier, they lack any real impact or punch. However, they appear very sparsely on the album, and they never have a leading role, so I suppose it is forgivable.

In any case, Traced in Air is an absolute treat for the fan of progressive music, metal music, and progressive metal music. I absolutely did not expect to find a band of this quality ever in my lifetime; especially one that goes in such an unexpected direction such as this. I cannot recommend this album enough. It is beautiful, it is engaging, it is absolutely engrossing.

Cynic produces a sound not easily described in detail, but can be easily summarized in the album’s title. It has an esoteric and transcendental feel to it. The songs flow seamlessly from one to the next, taking you with them to some place unknown, but somewhere you know you want to be. The songs truly do feel like they were Traced in Air.

Stephen’s mostly inane and irrelevant rating:

***** 5/5 Stars.