Not really a review, but a lesson in fact-checking yourself and a humbling reminder that stupid defiance is only getting in the way of the enjoyment of shit.
Recently I sneakily deleted a whole paragraph in my last Cynic review. I can do that, I'm not claiming to be a reputable news-outlet, right? But why did I do it? Well, simply put: It was embarrassing for me.
Sometimes - maybe fostered by some attendant circumstances which point in a seemingly similar direction - a wrong information forms in your head by itself and you just dont even come up with the idea of verifying whether it's actually true.
As I stated in great detail in said review Cynic's "Focus" transcends just being a great album for me. Instead it's one of the best things among all things ever made.
And even though it doesn't have quite the same status for me, I still absolutely love their 2008 reunion work "Traced In Air" like very few other albums. I've even had the poster which came with the digipak CD framed on my wall for surely a dozen years now. Yet it's hanging beside their signed 2009 German tour poster, which features the live line-up of original Floridian members Paul Masvidal and Sean Reinert and the Dutch section of guitarist / growler Tymon Kruidenier - who also performed on the album - and Robin Zielhorst - who definitely did not.
Instead the studio bassist had always been original band member Sean Malone, who just didn't play live at the time. This circumstance and the fact that the production didn't highlight the bass as it did on other Cynic releases may have led to the fact that at some point the false conviction nestled in my mind that it was already Zielhorst being heard on the recording. And for some stupid reason I never checked if that was actually the case.
But why did that even become an issue? Well, in 2019 Cynic released a remixed (and partly re-recorded) version of "Traced In Air". The teaser for it didn't get me excited and the news that all growling vocals had been removed and that there would be new bass lines by Sean Malone made this feel like an Ozzy Osbourne situation, where infamously the complete original bass parts of some of his albums had been replaced by new recordings by Robert Trujillo. So I was thinking it felt somehow disrespectful and just completely dismissed the remix ever since.
And now? What has changed?
Season Of Mist offered "Traced In Air (remixed)" for a bargain price, so I finally got it. And while comparing the booklet to the original I stumbled over my cringy mistake. Plus I also realized that this new version really sounds clearer and better than the original mix - at least in most parts.
And concerning the growls - they aren't actually as gone as I expected. There are still some kind of harsher and deeper vocals present where they used to be, so mostly there's just some kind of more aggressive texture absent, but appearantly not desperately missing.
So that point of critique actually doesn't make a great difference at all. The only track where I miss the bigger contrast and rollercoaster dynamic is "King Of Those Who Know". Here the new version omits the existence of the dueling voices completely, so I'll probably continue prefering the original version.
Yeah, so that's it. Usually I think that I'm always right, being the brightest mind I know from the inside and all, but with this I most definitely fucked up big time. Sorry!
Keine Kommentare:
Kommentar veröffentlichen