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.
My love affair with Baroness wasn’t an immediate one. Even after becoming a fan, it took me a while to be fully convinced.