CD Review: Cynic - The Portal Tapes

Written by Ricarda Menn Friday, 29 June 2012 09:29

Artist: Cynic
Title: The Portal Tapes
Genre: Ambient
Release Date: 23rd March 2012
Label: Season Of Mist

Album Review

CYNIC are among the most innovative and ambitious bands in the genre of Technical Death Metal, famous for a synergy of progressive and demanding yet shredding  metal. Their reputation was established with albums like ‘Traced In Air’ (2008) or the earlier work ‘Focus’ (1993). After this release, the band split up due to a lack of appreciation and understanding – once could argue that most of the people were not ready for such innovative metal, combining Death Metal and Jazz. As a consequence, the bigger part of the band continued to expand their Jazz and Ambient ambitions under the name ‘Portal’ and recorded some songs on a demo. Now, almost two decades later, those are released as ‘The Portal Tapes’ yet under the name CYNIC.

Fairly enough, when unaware of this background, the first moments of listening to ‘The Portal Tapes’ come as a surprise. Where one might await highly complex riffs, calm spheres of sounds are encountered. Yet, one should not be shied away and a closer listen is definitely appropriate and might even be rewarded. The over-all tempo is rather slow, electric sounds and fragments of melodies are inserted every now and then. Female, almost seductive vocals are contrasted with male vocals, which are not harsh but yet more direct and powerful. All sounds coalesce without much of interruptions or changes. There is a lot to discover that does not surface at the very first listen, which makes this record somehow interesting.

It may be questionable, why it is released under the name CYNIC – on the one hand, it is not CYNIC as most people know the band, on the other hand these records serve as a logical succession in their musical development, eventually foreshadowing future developments. And probably, ‘The Portal Tapes’ are much more easily accepted and appreciated today than 17 years ago, since especially the Metal community has become somewhat more open-minded.


Tracklist

01. Endless Endeavors
02. Karma's Plight
03. Circle
04. Costumed in Grace
05. Cosmos
06. Crawl Above
07. Mirror Child
08. Road to You
09. Belong
10. Not the Same


Line-up

Aruna Abrams - Vocals, Keyboards
Paul Masvidal - Guitar, Vocals
Sean Reinert - Drums, Percussion
Jason Gobel - Guitar
Chris Kringel - Bass


Website

www.myspace.com/cyniconline / www.cyniconline.com


Cover Picture




Rating

Music: 7
Sound: 8
Extras: -
Total: 7.5 / 10