That album was so listless-even with contributions from Reinert and Malone-that their once singular sound now felt more suited for a local Guitar Center. It’s a big gamble after Cynic’s 2014’s album Kindly Bent to Free Us, a misstep in extricating the band’s remaining traces of death metal. He reaches into the past to channel and honor his fallen co-creators with Ascension Codes, as close to a return-to-form as we’re going to get from Cynic. But Masvidal’s mystical worldview led him to embark on a final trek to find closure. With two-thirds of the core group gone, a comeback album seemed unfathomable. In 2020, the tale turned tragic for the Miami metal band: Reinert died suddenly in January and Malone died by suicide in December. In the 2010s, Cynic have been an ongoing question mark: Virtuosic bassist Sean Malone cycled in and out of the band, while drummer Sean Reinert departed in 2015, at which point he and singer-guitarist Paul Masvidal were in public disagreement over the group’s very existence. They broke up almost immediately after its release, and when they returned with 2008’s follow-up Traced in Air, their softer, proggier sound alienated some fans. While touring Europe with Death, authorities impounded their gear, and upon their return home, Hurricane Andrew razed their rehearsal space, further delaying Cynic’s debut album, 1993’s Focus: a perfect, iconoclastic slab of robotic-voiced jazzy death metal. Half its members were also part of the Florida death metal legends Death, appearing on 1991’s classic Human just after finishing high school.

Cynic’s music has often been eclipsed by the band’s mythology.

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