Reflections of a Dying World

After a relatively successful '88 Demo', Cynic had introduced itself to the local Florida metal scene with a demo that sported fairly decent sound quality, songwriting and band performance. With this having been said, it comes as something of a sour surprise that the year after, Cynic would return with a second demo that takes the band's strengths from the first and downplays them to something fairly less enjoyable. After a switch up in their line-up, Paul Masvidal takes the reins for vocal work, and there is the addition of a second guitarist into Cynic's sound. With 'Reflections Of A Dying World', the music stays fairly static and unchanged from '88 Demo', but the steep decline in recording quality makes this one something of a failure.

The riffs remain sharply rooted in thrash metal, close to bands like Slayer, or even the fellow Floridan death metal act Death. At this time, Death was a few steps ahead of Cynic and it is clear from the guitar riffs and songwriting that Paul Masvidal was an adherent to the teachings of Evil Chuck. The musicianship is fairly standard for thrash metal, featuring a focus on speed over complexity, and guitar solos aplenty, which on a related note are also the greatest thing that this demo has going for it. Paul Masvidal's growls here are better than Jack Kelly's from the first demo, but not by much. Unfortunately, every sound on 'Reflections Of A Dying World' is brought down heavily by the recording quality, which sounds as if Cynic threw away whatever means they had to do proper recording with '88 Demo' and opted for something much noisier and unpolished. The end result is a demo that may be a step forward in terms of the band's development, but a great step back in terms of enjoyable music.

This demo is released basically to show the band's evolution, and what the thrash roots that Cynic had, really were.


Paul has probably transfered his skilled back and forth from Master, as you can tell by the intro track to this demo, Denaturalizing Leaders. Sean continues to hammer away at his kit, in odd time fashions (Though not as much deviation as Focus). The vocals are quite impressive, considering Paul almost lost his voice over it. I assume he can only go on for so long with the harsh vocals, judging by the shorter length of songs. Most demo songs-- even by starting bands, are short in time. For a band at the beginning, they are quite good for starting out. Almost 4 minutes on the first song. That is impressive. What I also enjoyed is how the tracks flow together so easily, but not so much you cannot tell the difference between the songs (Aka: DragonForce).
The bass on this album is heavy as hell if you can make it out. Mark Van Erp isn't Tony Choy or Sean Malone, but he sure holds his part well.


Do not get me wrong, these songs are technical, and there are certain time signature changes, just not as much as Focus has. Though we have the technical parts, there is definitely ear-candy solo's throughout this album. On top of the epic solos, we also have the aggressiveness that everyone enjoys in the tremolo picking or ultra heavy power chords. There is no lack of that, making this a possible headbanging experience. You can just feel the heavy riffs off of Agitating Affliction.
Sadly, I wish I could write a longer review like always, but this is only a four song demo. I will leave with you with one important line: Only get this if you cannot get enough Cynic, or enjoy classic death metal with some very heavy riffs. Other then that and I believe you will not really enjoy this.

Denaturalizing Leaders: 9/10
Extremes: 8/10
A Life Astray: 7/10
Agitating Affliction: 8/10

36/40 = 80%