Yesterday, I talked about how much weight the Opportunity to buy something factors into my decision to buy it. That fact is much more true for this record, which I found a few feet away for the low price of $15 due to some minor damage (I haven’t been able to figure out what they were talking about).

I mostly knew Cynic by reputation: the project gained notoriety as a pseudo side project of massively important metal band Death, released Focus, which basically wrote the blueprint for what we now think of as progressive metal, and broke up almost immediately. They reunited in 2006, releasing a couple records to mixed reviews.

Ascension Codes, the first Cynic record without founding drummer Sean Reinert and longtime bassist Sean Malone, is similarly mixed, with many people dismissing it as a Paul Masvideal vanity project while others consider it an impressive effort that lets itself meander a bit too far into prog noodling. But as far as I can tell, that’s been Cynic’s whole deal since day one.

There’s certainly nothing offensive about this record: it weaves between virtuosic lead guitar lines, synth-filled ambient passages, and djenty death metal grooves in a way that’s surprising enough to be interesting but not sudden enough to be jarring. Vocals shift between airy cleans, effects-heavy robot melodies, and the occasional death metal growl—when they’re present at all. Most of the songs are instrumental, carried by the lead guitar in place of a voice.

There are eighteen tracks, but many of them are ambient transition pieces that flow between the proper songs. Problem is, many of the songs are just as formless as flowing as the transitionary pieces. For instance, “DNA Activation Template” lingers in a hazy atmosphere for several minutes with a robotic spoken word section before finally launching into a riff that only lasts for less than a minute.

But on the other hand, the songs that do emerge from the haze are killer. “6th Dimensional Archetype” almost feels like Mars Volta-does-djent. “Architects of Consciousness” has a proper chorus nestled between technical riffs, synth-laden atmospheres, and singing guitar solos. “Aurora” is almost tender, showing that there’s a beating heart somewhere below their third eye. “Diamond Light Body” is anthemic and triumphant, coalescing all of the various meandering threads into a mountaintop of a climax.

And anyway,  anyone who would be scared off by aimless noodling and untethered ambitions probably wouldn’t be listening to Cynic in the first place. Likewise, anyone who’s here to listen to a prog metal record that might help them transcend this mortal plane probably won’t be scared away by a little wandering. This isn’t the kind of record that you throw on to rock out to—as if the alien spirit octopus on the cover wasn’t enough to tell you that. This is the kind of record that you turn on, lay down, and see where it takes you. Even though there are some pointless detours, the journey is worth the trip.