THE CYNIC

"The Cynic" is the debut full-length studio album by Indian, Delhi based progressive extreme metal act Guillotine. The album was self-released in october 2010.

The band cite acts like Porcupine Tree, Tool, Dream Theater, Opeth, and Children of Bodom as influences and while Guillotine are not clones and use their influences wisely, it´s still apparent that those influences have a great impact on the music style on "The Cynic". The music features heavy riffs, melodic leads, a technically well playing rhythm section, a skilled keyboard player, who plays tasteful notes, and a versatile lead vocalist in Baran Nambiar, who sings both growling and clean vocals (without accent if anyone should doubt it). He has a pretty "regular" clean singing voice, but like Steven Wilson (Porcupine Tree), he makes the most of what he´s got and the clean vocals on the album are very well executed and provide the music with many memorable hooks. His growling vocals are not intelligible and they are distorted quite a bit. They do suit the music well, but I would have preferred a more intelligible and less distorted growling style.

The music is relatively complex but not overtly. Guillotine generally favour memorability over technical playing, but overall there is a good balance between the two. The album features a very well sounding and powerful production and all in all "The Cynic" comes off as a high quality progressive extreme metal album with a great melodic sensibility. I´m impressed. A 3.5 - 4 star (75%) rating is deserved.