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Exivious > Demo 2001 > Reviews
Exivious - Demo 2001

There's a reason why Cynic added 2 of these guys! - 100%

Sraiken, September 15th, 2011

I must say that this demo represents the sole work by Exivious that features vocals. The vocals are handled by Tymon, who in later years would go on to growl for Cynic. After this demo was released, the band decided to go in an all-instrumental route.

Speaking of the vocals, they are a dead ringer for the vocals on Cynic's "Focus" album. When they aren't growled, they are run through a vocoder in an identical way to the way Paul Masvidal's were run in Cynic.

Now, as far as the music is concerned, this is very much on par with anything that has ever been released in the progressive metal genre. Period. The music is that good. It's extremely heavy, fast, and technical. It's very much influenced by the death metal that Cynic was, so ultimately this demo ends up sounding like a mix of Cynic and Death. The only part in the entire demo that is played with clean guitar is in the first 18 seconds of "Where We Belong" tThat, of course, would change with future Exivious releases).

All in all, you should track this puppy down. It's that good. The only thing that sucks about this demo is that it's only two songs long. However, even that is not enough to bring down my rating. This is amazing stuff!

What Cynic Would Sound Like If They Hadn't Split - 90%

FromHlidskjalf, March 15th, 2006

I'll just start this review off by saying this is the best demo of all time. If they were still around, this demo would be a perfect representation of Cynic. You can even download the two songs for free at Exivious' website, so go get them!

Anyways, this is a band who obviously were heavily influenced by Cynic. It's a shame though that this demo is so damn short (much like Cynic's Focus album), so I guess this Death fusion stuff isn't so easy to do. The first song, Where We Belong, starts out with a trippy synth before the vocoder "robot" vocals come in. The robot vocals are just like Cynic's, so either that should be a big turn on or turn off depending on how you felt about them before. The vocals are very good too and remind me a lot of early 90's death metal vocals. The bass was all programmed but it doesn't sound noticeably bad or anything, so kudos to that. The drumming is great as well and allows the music to flow perfectly. The riffs, such as the one at 1:30 in Where We Belong, are technical as hell and catchy which is definitely a plus. Fear The Unknown, the second (and sadly) last song on this demo has more death vocals in it than the first one but the vocoder vocals are still used quite a bit. And I think they're even catchy; the part at 0:49 is orgasmic.

Basically, this is FREE. So go get it immediately. It's definitely worth downloading for fans of jazzy death fusion or Cynic. It's a shame that Tymon said that this demo doesn't really represent the kind of music he makes now and he's not going back to this style, because I think this style is pretty amazing. Nonetheless, he's already proven he's a worthy musician so I'll be awaiting for something new from him in the future.