Cynic - focus

Ahhhhh Cynic now there's a f*ckin great album.


Sadly, they only released one album, Focus, then split up over musical differences.

There is an excellent site here, The Cynical Sphere which gives a good account of the band, from start to finish, and what they're up to now.

Also check out the demo site - they started out as a fairly average death metal band and each successive demo charts their progress. There are a couple of songs from Focus in demo form (with Tony Choy, who went on to record with Atheist and Pestilence), recorded a couple of years before the album, you'd barely recognise them.

Paul Masvidal and Sean Reinert are currently playing in a band called Aeon Spoke and you'd better take a seat before you listen to it

Shawn Malone has released a couple of albums known as Gordian Knot (which the other members of Cynic also guest on).


I saw Paul and Sean when they played on Death's tour for the Human album and, being absolutely honest, they were two of the finest musicians I have ever seen, especially Sean. He came onstage just before the rest of the band to warm up for a bit and it was and is the finest display of drumming I've ever seen.