Cynic - Kindly Bent To Free Us

Cynic's new album sounds a little shakey, especially the lyrics here. The title track's is quite bleh - something  i thought Cynic always had locked down. 

Edited by Horizons - February 13 2014 at 19:26

I've more than come to terms with Paul Masdival's vocals, so I won't bother mentioning them further. What I will say is that they seem to be drawing too much influence from other bands without adding any of their own personality to the songs. Lyrically it sounds like Masdival is trying too hard to be Cedric Bixler-Zavala. The intros to True Hallucination Speak and The Lion's Roar sound suspiciously like Mastodon. Sean Malone sounds like he was expressly told to write Joe Lester (of Intronaut fame) -esque basslines. Masdival's tone is lacking something. A certain warmth or anything that would make it memorable. Sean Reinert's drumming is solid as always, but he just seems off in the mix, like the microphones were just a tiny bit too far from the drums.

I loved the album, my early thoughts from the streaming are that its as good as Traced in Air. I'll have to listen to it more but no problems for me, and I really don't hear the Mastodon influence at all, still sounds very much like Cynic. 

Well i wouldn't call Cedric's lyrics esoteric - but that's another story :3

I'm amazed it wasn't terrible. There are solid melodies pretty consistently. It's maybe somewhat of a mix between Portal and Traced in Air.

The bass lines and spacey atmosphere are fantastic on this record. I love everything by Cynic, it's hard to say what I like the most.