If it makes you feel better I drunkenly pestered my Indian Uber driver who barely spoke English to play it the entire ride home and when he didn’t because he didn’t understand what I was asking (not his fault) I just played it out loud on my phone on repeat. I remember saying “I’m sorry bro I’m a piece of shit” when he dropped me off and giving him $20 lmao
Been continuing the Metal catch-up. Surprise overall favorite as far as consistency has been Born Of Osiris. I say surprise because while I did like them even back then, they were very hit and miss for me. Like Follow The Signs was always one of my favorite Metal songs ever made, but I never liked a full album of theirs to that extent. But their 2 most recent are fucking phenomenal from start to finish and had the most stand out replayable HITS that I kept coming back to out of all the albums I listened to. Analog In A Cell >>>>>>>>>>>>> The other 2 albums before that didn’t stand out as hard but were still solid for sure. But as it stands currently, BOO is who I’m thirstiest to see live after all these listens. For me, they’re that perfect blend of that more complex, trippy type sound, heaviness, catchiness that creates replay value, etc.
Listened to most of Mastodon’s shit that I missed, got one left I think. Solid but they definitely never matched that magic of Crack The Skye again.
Absolute worst goes to the newest Winds Of Plague. Holy shit that was a disgusting listen and the only single one that I almost turned off. The worst any of the other listens were was average, this shit was HORRIBLE. I was never the biggest fan of them but I liked them enough at one point. They’re straight Brocore now. I guess that type of influence was always there to an extent but they were still predominantly Deathcore around the time of Decimate The Weak. Now it’s literally like heavier Limp Bizkit level shit wit breakdowns. Supreme trash smh.
Unfortunately I don’t think any other album exists that sounds anything like Traced In Air, not even Cynic’s other shit. Their newest, Ascension Codes, would be the closest, but it lacks that concise catchiness of Traced In Air. It’s more free flowing and improvisational I feel, and way less catchy vocal melodies and choruses. They even released a strictly instrumental version of it. I don’t even consider TIA a Metal album, the only thing Metal about it is some of the guitar structures, but even then it’s very loosely. So heavy Tech and Prog Metal ain’t exactly the best place to look, but any time you look up similar bands, you’re always pointed towards Metal bands. But they really only resemble Cynic if you’re talking strictly the Focus album when they were still heavier. I do see Cynic’s fingerprints and influence all over these Tech and Prog bands tho. Shit I even heard it in JFAC’s most recent since they went full blown Tech Death now. The guitar work and especially the bass lines are 100% Cynic and Necrophagist type shit.
And lighter Prog and Tech bands that would maybe be more similar, like a Scale The Summit or something along those lines, have a completely different brand of it.
Fuck that album was truly some one of a kind magic in a fucking bottle shit. Reason it’s forever solidified in my top 5. I still chase similar records to this day. That’s what kickstarted this whole Metal run, like I had mentioned before.
This AI software shit is getting wild. It will be interesting to see the impact this has on the internet experience moving forward. Can chicks still sell pics of their butthole when anyone can create a digi-thot? We live in interesting times.
So the other night I went down the rabbit hole of looking up some of the Metal tours that went down over these years, and I could cry that I missed this.
They were the only semi-entertaining band up until BTBAM for me. We left during ERRA to go smoke in the car and came back during VoM, them back to back with born of osiris was absolute torture for me
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Hands will be thrown.
Listened to most of Mastodon’s shit that I missed, got one left I think. Solid but they definitely never matched that magic of Crack The Skye again.
And lighter Prog and Tech bands that would maybe be more similar, like a Scale The Summit or something along those lines, have a completely different brand of it.