ASCENSION CODES

CYNIC, a group apart in the extreme avant-garde prog drawer, releases its 4th album, an opus that many people no longer thought they would listen to, given the successive losses of members of the group.

CYNIC embarks on a musical manifesto where the titles are composed in concept form, 18 tracks interspersed with interludes, hovering outros and hanging up the titles with each other. This causes a latent ambient, jazzy, post-rock atmosphere which combines in an appropriate way with the CYNIC sound well turned on the djent metal, here more calm and melodic. In fact, the album loses its force of yesteryear, its musical punch by plunging into titles which go along the album to merge; the album loses its soul in my opinion and it is paradoxically the interlude titles that give it the musical framework to make it a good album. The sound is more refined, more ambient, more atmospheric and therefore less sticky; 'The Winged Ones', 'Mythical Serpents' and 'Architects of Consciousness' have that little bit more that changes the pace, '6th Dimensional Archetype' is typical djent as for 'DNA Activation Template' the intro made me think that 'we were still in the interlude and actually one of the most atmospheric, one of my favorites. 'Aurora' with its ethereal voices one of the most melodic.

Good album from a singular CYNIC much less avant-garde than it seems but which paradoxically suits me more in this new decade.