MESHUGGAH + Cynic @ Club Soda

By Jake Wenzel - The Incinerator - 02/18/2009

Back in 1994 Cynic released their debut album, Focus, one of my favorite albums of all time, and one of the albums most important to the development of intelligent progressive metal. They are often credited as being the first band to successfully merge jazz fusion with death metal, and are without a doubt some of the most virtuosic musicians to ever grace the metal scene. But as is all too common for bands that make challenging and truly progressive music, the importance of what they had done was not understood until many years later. After Focus, Cynic disbanded for the better part of 13 years and the members of the band turned their energies towards various progressive rock projects. They decided to resurface for old time’s sake in 2007 to do a reunion tour, and the major outpouring of fan support and excitement led to a headlining spot on the Wacken: Open Air festival in Germany. Cynic went from being booed off the stages of tiny clubs to headlining the biggest metal festival in existence- and all without any self-promotion or activity on their part. The fans finally got it, and now that they have it they’re crazy about it.

This tour they’re supporting their latest album, Traced in Air, which was released in late 2008. Most people seem to agree that it’s not quite as good as Focus, but it’s possible that it’s just even more difficult to understand. The two albums differ in what they’re trying to accomplish: the tracks on Focus are composed around psychedelic, dynamic melodies, whereas Traced in Air makes use of frequent and abrupt changes in mood and tempo, juxtaposing harsh dissonance with cosmic ambience. Regardless of what you think of the album, the new songs are very well suited to Cynic’s live performance style and sounded amazing at the concert.

In contrast with most technical metal bands which attempt to make their live sound as identical as possible to their album, Cynic is solely concerned with capturing the vibe of their songs. As mentioned above, this approach worked well for the songs off Traced in Air. They sounded beautiful- that’s really all there is to say. That whole part of the set was a beautiful wall of psychedelic sound. The tracks they played off Focus were also awesome to behold, but the looser approach didn’t work quite as well and certain parts came across as being somewhat sloppy. Despite this, the crowd was very into the whole set, and even seemed to appreciate frontman Paul Masvidal’s hippy proclamations about how attachment to ego is a form of psychic violence, as well as various pieces of wisdom about the importance of cosmic love and being receptive to positive spiritual vibrations.

This is my second time reviewing a Meshuggah concert for CJLO, so instead of putting the band and their new album into context I’ll just cut to the chase: the show was perfect.

The entire show was filmed for a DVD, so the sound engineers really took their time to do a thorough sound check- it was at least 45 minutes long- but it made everything sound unbelievably good, and the mixing just kept getting better as the night went on. It was so good; in fact, that with this performance I would say Meshuggah is even better live than on CD.

All of the guitars but particularly the bass had an amazing tone- like primordial swamp sludge. It sounded similar to something you’d find on old Primus records, except instead of sturgeon fishing it conjures up images of the primordial cosmic sea and the emergence of consciousness from cosmic chaos- which is of course exactly what Meshuggah is lyrically concerned with and experientially trying to produce. They create the kind of soundscape that you can feel reverberating throughout yourself, offering to carry you to a higher plane of existence.

Meshuggah and Cynic are perfect bands to put together on a tour bill for exactly that reason. Both bands are into promoting philosophical and spiritual progression, and try to use their music to create the experience of transcendence. Cynic comes at it from a positive direction, whereas Meshuggah comes at it from a much darker place, and together they balance each other out extremely well.

In my last Meshuggah review I noted that the crowd was very aggressive and there were quite a few people clearly out to hurt others, but this show was completely different. Maybe it was all the hippy talk, but despite filming for a DVD (which usually makes crowds crazier) everyone was extremely relaxed. I even had a guy apologize to me for slightly bumping into me. I’d say it was one of the best crowds at any show I’ve been to...people were just there to enjoy the music.