Cynic - The Portal Tapes

#138) Cynic - The Portal Tapes (1994/95/2012)

 1. Endless Endeavors
 2. Karma's Plight
 3. Circle
 4. Costumed In Grace
 5. Cosmos
 6. Crawl Above
 7. Mirror Child
 8. Road To You
 9. Belong
 10. Not the Same

ugh, what the fuck is this? besides being terrible it's also not technically a Cynic album which is misleading and pisses me off, although i probably should've done my research before buying the album but whatever.

so, brief history : a year after Cynic released their landmark debut Focus they broke up while working on their follow up and weren't seen again until they released Traced In Air in 2008 (more on that album soon.) now i was lead to believe that this record was a "lost" demo recording of what was to be their 2nd album. unfortunately for me that's not quite the case. what happened after Cynic broke up was members Paul Masvidal (guitars, vocals), Jason Gobel (guitars) and Sean Reinert (drums, keyboards) formed a new project called Portal. Portal is basically Cynic with all the cool metal parts removed so all you have left is the new agey bullshit, but now it has female vocals. it's ridiculously cheesy but not in an entertaining way. they recorded this in '94 and '95 but nothing ever materialized (outside of some bootlegs) until now. what a fucking treat. now i don't know if this is the sound they were going for on their 2nd album or if this is just the sound they decided on for Portal but either way it's awful.  but this is not my thing at all.