KINDLY BENT TO FREE US

Kindly Bent To Free Us, Prog-metal band Cynic's 3rd full studio album in 22 years (long story) is not the prog album your parents used to listen to. Hell, it's not even the prog album you used to listen to. This is prog for the 21st century and it sits in some uncomfortable territory. Fronted by guitarist Paul Masvidal, bassist Sean Malone and drummer Sean Reinert, they start you on your album journey on Hallucination Speak with a fade in of light synth washes and quiet churning guitars before introducing the song proper with louder crunching guitars that immediately hands off to chunky jazz inflected drum and bass rhythms as Masdival's clear vocal presents itself. His vocals will be the first and last non alien sound that you will hear on this album. The instruments will sound familiar, naturally, but It's the music that sounds alien and not in the way that you think it would. There are ghostly echoes of the prog giants that have gone before but in ways that are almost unrecognizable. Cynic's music feels as if it is an x-ray image of prog metal or like glimpsing the spirit of a departed loved one, as it's quite singular and free of all the past prog music cliches found in songs by groups like Dream Theater.

There are traces of the prog metal music that existed before but it has been somehow metaphysically changed in ways that we'll never really understand. The album's second track, The Lions Roar, is more of a traditional anthemic prog metal song with subtle jazz inflections with an almost poppy chorus that belies it's complex layering. The title track is where we get into the heart of the beast which starts with slow melodic verses that switch over to waves of acid tinged guitar riffing, with technical drum mastery by Reinert's manic flowing poly rhythms and intense bass drumming that is absolutely breathtaking before changing back to a slower pace. Masvidal and Malone both weave delicate melodies and a tricky time signature around Reinhert that then explodes into a locomotive powered percussion piece supported by the powerful and precise playing by Masvidal and Malone. It feels that a miss by any one of the three by even a fraction of a second would send the entire work crashing to the ground.

These four signature song structures are repeated before the song concludes with an extended chorus that shows how Malone is so integral in assisting Reinert maintain a sense of groove in even their most technically proficient workouts. Infinite Shapes introduces an industrial guitar sound to go along with the jazz and tech fest while Moon Heart Sun Head continues the tech magic that builds up to a good old fashioned middle eight section that is introduced by rapid foot work and a heavy hits to Reinert's toms and snare that then starts off a majestic ascending major scale guitar solo that makes you think you're on your way skyward. This solo will give you the feeling of being pulled forward off your feet at the speed of light and just as quickly thrown backward again before slowing regaining your equilibrium.

Gitanjali has spacey tribal like moans from Masvidal as well as more complex guitar playing throughout with Reinert back to his tasteful but never overplayed tech flourishes, with creepy almost subliminal keyboard washes floating throughout the sound mix. Holy Fallout is an anthemic prog/tech metal closer that again shows off the skill of all three musicians before fading into How Bountiful, a gentle Masvidal thanksgiving tome to the earth and universe. The most outstanding aspect of Cynic's music is the band's ability to seamlessly meld loud hard rock with mellow passages, and that is no mean feat. Kindly Bent To Free US is an album that is deceptively complex and layered and demands a lot from it's listener (It took a lot from this reviewer to just remember this album's basic outline after just a few listens with songs that average a duration of no longer than 5 minutes), but it should be in every 21st century prog metal fans collection, as it an album produced by one of those rare artists who are always genre defining as well as trying to be genre breaking at the same time. Indeed, the old gods do speak.

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