Metal / Progressive Metal
9/10
The audiophile is a notoriously hard-to-please beast when it comes to metal. Many bands, like Meshuggah, Nile and DevilDriver alienate listeners with music that is altogether too cutthroat and intense for mass consumption. On the other hand, mainstream groups such as Disturbed, Korn and Slipknot sacrifice integrity for listenability, creating a sound that comes off as simple and tired. The line between truly vitriolic and obvious, strained, posing is a deadly zone to tread. It is nearly unheard of to create an album that is heavy enough for the seasoned fan, accessible to the unaccustomed radio maven and truly experimental all at once.
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Cynic’s Traced In Air.
From the very first minute, you will understand that this album is anything but metal as usual. Distorted guitars, tribal drums and a high-pitched, mechanical voice chanting “We claim this space” immediately conjure the image of a jungle on Mars, and from there it’s all ethereal visions and technical mastery.
Paul Masvidal’s vocals range from a distorted, robot-like falsetto to throat-ripping grunts and growls, both of which are often sung simultaneously. Synthesizers are used frequently, but it never sounds forced, over-the-top, or cheesy; everything from the vocals to the drums and guitars blend together to create a cosmic, psychedelic symphony. These segments are contrasted by passages that contain absolutely blistering drum lines and snarls that’ll recall the monster under your bed from when you were a child. Like the vocals, however, most of the time these two dissonant sounds- the serene and the violent- will be intersecting, but never clashing, and it sounds like nothing else ever recorded.
Truly, this album is all about contrasts. The wonders of the beyond offset by the horrors of the unknown; a soothing aria and a troubling yelp waltzing through an audible landscape where shimmering oceans pour into monstrous, jagged caverns. And I would be remiss not to mention the lyrics, which contain some of the most poetic verses ever applied to heavy metal (Google the lyrics to “Adam’s Murmur” right now if you don’t believe me).
It’s a shame that this album will be ignored by most, because it’s one of the most thought-provoking, gorgeous, and visceral works of art of the year. Bands like Dream Theater and Symphony-X might wear the moniker of “progressive metal”, but with Traced In Air, Cynic has truly and undeniably moved the genre forward, and that is a rarity and a blessing that should never be overlooked.
