Cynic - Focus (1993) Vinyl Roadrunner Records death atheist pestilence believer

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After years of being hailed as promising in Florida's death metal scene, Cynic recorded Focus. The result was an album combining their love of death metal with other influences, notably jazz-fusion. Instead of choosing the brutal and hard-hitting approach to metal like most of their contemporaries, Focus takes an experimental stance to music.

Although being often dubbed progressive metal, the musical approach on Focus has arguably even more in common with jazz than it has with the progressive metal or progressive rock movements, leading some to coin the term "jazz metal" to describe the music. Elements of both can be found: progressive rock/metal is reflected in some song structures and occasional odd-time meters, while jazz influences are evident in some harmonic and rhythmic phenomena. The songs alternate between harsh death metal parts and more serene, smoother passages. In general, the parts flow smoothly into each other instead of making abrupt, sudden transitions. In addition to being rather complex rhythmically, the songs also feature an advanced approach to harmony. The vocal melodies are mostly simple and linear, leaving a lot of melodic space for the guitars and even bass instead.

The most distinct feature on the album is the use of two types of main vocals, almost equally prominent. In a traditional death metal vein, the album features a hoarse, guttural, growling voice - death grunts - courtesy of keyboardist Tony Teegarden. Lead singer Paul Masvidal was in danger of losing his voice at the time and thus did not perform the growling vocals himself. The other main type of vocal output is Masvidal singing through a vocoder-type effect, resulting in a synthesized voice with a robotic quality.

Guitarist/vocalist Paul Masvidal and drummer Sean Reinert had joined Chuck Schuldiner's Death to record the seminal Human. Certain similarities can be heard between the two albums, although Focus only rarely reaches the level of aggression found on Human.

The guitar parts of Masvidal and Jason Gobel intertwine, bringing to mind such guitar duos as Television's Tom Verlaine and Richard Lloyd, or Robert Fripp and Adrian Belew from King Crimson.[1] Only rarely do both guitars play the same part simultaneously; most of the time both guitars have their distinct own parts that tie together to form a fabric of harmonies and melodies, in addition to numerous guitar solos. Masvidal's flowing, Allan Holdsworth-esque solos stand out with their free phrasing.

Masvidal and Gobel use very similar gear throughout the record. Both play a Steinberger brand electric guitar equipped with a Roland MIDI pickup and guitar synthesizer, and both used ADA amplification. Most of the synthesized sounds on the album are generated with these guitar synthesizers, not keyboards. The Steinberger guitars also feature a tremolo system which bends each string an equal amount, allowing the bending of full chord shapes in tune. A demonstration of this is heard in the very first guitar chord of "I'm But A Wave To...".

Sean Malone plays a Kubicki fretless bass nearly throughout the album. The fretless bass has a soft attack and a round, warm sound rather atypical to heavy metal, which usually prefers the punchier attack of fretted bass. On some parts on Focus Malone plays a 12-string Chapman stick instead. Malone's bass lines do not generally follow either guitar part. His lines are often quite busy and create a throbbing rhythmical pulse that syncopates with Reinert's drumwork. He also delivers a rare bass solo on the instrumental track "Textures".

Sean Reinert's drum style meshes together elements from both heavy metal and jazz. He skillfully uses accents, fills and varied dynamics to keep the songs rhythmically vivid. He occasionally plays a 16th-note double bass drum beat to emphasize certain parts of songs, but does not play blast beat on the album. In addition to an acoustic drum kit, he also uses electronic drums on some songs.[3] The introduction to "Sentiment" demonstrates Reinert playing a polymetric beat consisting of several different meters on top of each other.

The vocals of Paul Masvidal and Tony Teegarden alternate between Masvidal's robotic vocoder and Teegarden's guttural death growl, both of which are given equal emphasis on the album. In addition, a female vocalist (Sonia Otey, who also performed with French death metal band Loudblast around the same time) performed on several of the album's tracks.

PLEASE NOTE: IT HAS BEEN BROUGHT TO MY ATTENTION THIS IS THE 2013 REISSUE, NOT THE 1993 ORIGINAL. GOOD LUCK AND HAPPY BIDDING!

TO CLARIFY - THIS IS THE 2013 REISSUE - NOT THE ORIGINAL. THANK YOU!