Cynic - Traced In Air
Release: November 17, 2008 (Europe); November 25, 2008 (US)
Genre: Metal
Label: Season of Mist Records
Length: 32:54
Nick's Rating: 4.5/5
In the world of today's heavy metal music, metal just isn't metal unless it's extreme (i.e. extreme metal subgenres meaning thrash, black, death, or doom... not the band, which, if you mention around most metal fans, you may be disemboweled). Every group, and I mean every group, incorporates bits and pieces of any of those, especially the first three, that it's almost like these groups want to prove record companies right about the Loudness War, that loud music IS good. It's kind of jarring, for instance, in an Epica album, to jump between opera vocals and death growls. Groups wanting to show their chops do it with long, long, loooooooooooooooong passages that are so generic, such an obcious trope, that, even though I was raised on Yes and Pink Floyd and ELP and all those other bands that codified that arrangement style in a rock context, it makes me ill. Okay, John Petrucci, you're a good guitarist. Thank you. I get the point. Please finish the song. I've heard this before, and others at least had it in them to do something original.
Cynic's sound is something that dodges the latter fully and rewrites the former. The best way to describe this band is "space metal." No, not in the sense that Arjen Anthony Lucassen (Ayreon and all his other graphomanias) wants us to think of with his Star One project (especially with its first album being called Space Metal), nor is this UFO (who often were called "space metal," though at best they were either or); the sound of Cynic's Traced In Air is unlike anything else that's readily available. It has a little bit of jazz, a little bit of death metal, a little bit of classic prog-metal, a little bit of guitar fireworks, a little bit of Hawkwind, even a little bit of indie-rock. Few if any bands can actually combine all of this together in one place; most of them don't even understand all of them, and few if any of them could understand how these could go together. Well, despite the fact that it doesn't so much shift the standard metal paradigms as it does tell them to screw themselves and it just does what it pleases, it works, and it works better than 99% of modern metal albums.
The album spans eight songs and just over half an hour. The longest song is shorter than seven minutes. Musically speaking, it's as technically-proficient as Opeth or Dream Theater. By itself, this is pretty shocking. If you don't believe it... well, you're entirely entitled. It doesn't sound like it makes much sense. In the end, though, it's totally reasonable. The songs all truck along at midpace, but they use interesting arrangements, using pauses and dynamics more impressively than many twice-as-beloved groups do today. The riffs are complex enough to reveal their skills, but simple enough to keep you from focusing exclusively on that unless you actually want to; the complexity, unlike with Dream Theater, is not flagrant or in your face, nor is it ever the sole purpose of any song on the album.
On top of that, the sound is very detailed. The folks who mastered the album did so intelligently, with real concern for the sound of the record, which is more than you could say for most other metal records. In fact, 99% of all records produced these days are too loud and sound like sandpaper, regardless of genre. I dare you to listen to Vapor Trails at full blast without getting a headache. By comparison, the sound quality of Traced In Air is marvelous. You can hear every instrument. You can clearly hear the multitracking of vocals. Paul Masvidal takes up an interesting technique on this album; all his non-growled vocals are sung through a vocoder. Often, he will growl the vocals, then have the vocoder/'normal' voice on top of them. This just adds to the spacy atmosphere of the record. If nothing else, this album should be praised for having something of an actual unifying feeling or atmosphere behind it other than just being pillaging songs.
Traced In Air is the sort of album that metal needs more of; heavy, but not afraid to be listenable. It shows chops, but doesn't let the displays overstay their welcome. You know they're good, and that they're very good, but that's it, and that was probably all you wanted to know in the first place. It would be kind of pointless to name specific song titles as far as what's the best on this record, but if you're only looking for one song, maybe "Integral Birth." Or maybe "Evolutionary Sleeper." Or maybe "King of Those Who Know." Or maybe... just any of them. They're all amazing.
I wouldn't call this album "perfect," though. It has two defects, but thankfully, both are plenty minor. The first is that, for as unique as the sound of Traced In Air is, it's basically just the same as Focus, their first album, in many, many, many respects. Of course, why, indeed, should one mess with a good formula? Keeping a formula sure helped basically every pop or power-metal act ever, didn't it? More annoying, though, is the length. You'll be paying full-price, or probably more (my copy cost about fifteen dollars when I ordered it from Amazon), for something shorter than the average LP. By the time you finish, you'll be left wanting more. Compared to many other albums by many other bands who want to borrow that "progressive death metal" sound, Traced In Air is a light snack to their endless banquets. Despite that, this is just a minor worry. After all, a) modern CD players, as well as MP3 players, have the ability to auto-repeat the whole album, b) if you have a vinyl edition (if that was released, and I think it was...), how much effort does it truly take to get up and flip the record back over and re-set the tone arm, especially if you've already done it once, and c) if you still haven't had enough, fear not; the band is coming out with an EP full of extras, including an unreleased song.
That said, I can't say it enough; you need this album and you need it now. Even if you just listen to it once, deem it crap and hand it off to a friend whose ears you want to torture (and considering you just marked this album crap...), listen to it at least once. Buy the album. This is a band that needs some more recognition, lest they be buried under artists who follow the examples of Evanescence, etc. under the assumption that that's real metal music, or that proficiency is shown only by marking how long you can jack your guitar off while playing modestly-impressive riffs at super-fast undigestible speeds. Traced In Air doesn't bother with any of that... and that's why it's great.
In the world of today's heavy metal music, metal just isn't metal unless it's extreme (i.e. extreme metal subgenres meaning thrash, black, death, or doom... not the band, which, if you mention around most metal fans, you may be disemboweled). Every group, and I mean every group, incorporates bits and pieces of any of those, especially the first three, that it's almost like these groups want to prove record companies right about the Loudness War, that loud music IS good. It's kind of jarring, for instance, in an Epica album, to jump between opera vocals and death growls. Groups wanting to show their chops do it with long, long, loooooooooooooooong passages that are so generic, such an obcious trope, that, even though I was raised on Yes and Pink Floyd and ELP and all those other bands that codified that arrangement style in a rock context, it makes me ill. Okay, John Petrucci, you're a good guitarist. Thank you. I get the point. Please finish the song. I've heard this before, and others at least had it in them to do something original.
Cynic's sound is something that dodges the latter fully and rewrites the former. The best way to describe this band is "space metal." No, not in the sense that Arjen Anthony Lucassen (Ayreon and all his other graphomanias) wants us to think of with his Star One project (especially with its first album being called Space Metal), nor is this UFO (who often were called "space metal," though at best they were either or); the sound of Cynic's Traced In Air is unlike anything else that's readily available. It has a little bit of jazz, a little bit of death metal, a little bit of classic prog-metal, a little bit of guitar fireworks, a little bit of Hawkwind, even a little bit of indie-rock. Few if any bands can actually combine all of this together in one place; most of them don't even understand all of them, and few if any of them could understand how these could go together. Well, despite the fact that it doesn't so much shift the standard metal paradigms as it does tell them to screw themselves and it just does what it pleases, it works, and it works better than 99% of modern metal albums.
The album spans eight songs and just over half an hour. The longest song is shorter than seven minutes. Musically speaking, it's as technically-proficient as Opeth or Dream Theater. By itself, this is pretty shocking. If you don't believe it... well, you're entirely entitled. It doesn't sound like it makes much sense. In the end, though, it's totally reasonable. The songs all truck along at midpace, but they use interesting arrangements, using pauses and dynamics more impressively than many twice-as-beloved groups do today. The riffs are complex enough to reveal their skills, but simple enough to keep you from focusing exclusively on that unless you actually want to; the complexity, unlike with Dream Theater, is not flagrant or in your face, nor is it ever the sole purpose of any song on the album.
On top of that, the sound is very detailed. The folks who mastered the album did so intelligently, with real concern for the sound of the record, which is more than you could say for most other metal records. In fact, 99% of all records produced these days are too loud and sound like sandpaper, regardless of genre. I dare you to listen to Vapor Trails at full blast without getting a headache. By comparison, the sound quality of Traced In Air is marvelous. You can hear every instrument. You can clearly hear the multitracking of vocals. Paul Masvidal takes up an interesting technique on this album; all his non-growled vocals are sung through a vocoder. Often, he will growl the vocals, then have the vocoder/'normal' voice on top of them. This just adds to the spacy atmosphere of the record. If nothing else, this album should be praised for having something of an actual unifying feeling or atmosphere behind it other than just being pillaging songs.
Traced In Air is the sort of album that metal needs more of; heavy, but not afraid to be listenable. It shows chops, but doesn't let the displays overstay their welcome. You know they're good, and that they're very good, but that's it, and that was probably all you wanted to know in the first place. It would be kind of pointless to name specific song titles as far as what's the best on this record, but if you're only looking for one song, maybe "Integral Birth." Or maybe "Evolutionary Sleeper." Or maybe "King of Those Who Know." Or maybe... just any of them. They're all amazing.
I wouldn't call this album "perfect," though. It has two defects, but thankfully, both are plenty minor. The first is that, for as unique as the sound of Traced In Air is, it's basically just the same as Focus, their first album, in many, many, many respects. Of course, why, indeed, should one mess with a good formula? Keeping a formula sure helped basically every pop or power-metal act ever, didn't it? More annoying, though, is the length. You'll be paying full-price, or probably more (my copy cost about fifteen dollars when I ordered it from Amazon), for something shorter than the average LP. By the time you finish, you'll be left wanting more. Compared to many other albums by many other bands who want to borrow that "progressive death metal" sound, Traced In Air is a light snack to their endless banquets. Despite that, this is just a minor worry. After all, a) modern CD players, as well as MP3 players, have the ability to auto-repeat the whole album, b) if you have a vinyl edition (if that was released, and I think it was...), how much effort does it truly take to get up and flip the record back over and re-set the tone arm, especially if you've already done it once, and c) if you still haven't had enough, fear not; the band is coming out with an EP full of extras, including an unreleased song.
That said, I can't say it enough; you need this album and you need it now. Even if you just listen to it once, deem it crap and hand it off to a friend whose ears you want to torture (and considering you just marked this album crap...), listen to it at least once. Buy the album. This is a band that needs some more recognition, lest they be buried under artists who follow the examples of Evanescence, etc. under the assumption that that's real metal music, or that proficiency is shown only by marking how long you can jack your guitar off while playing modestly-impressive riffs at super-fast undigestible speeds. Traced In Air doesn't bother with any of that... and that's why it's great.
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