No, not that Portal.

Here’s a pretty major lapse in my metal education: I somehow had no idea that there was a Cynic “off-shoot” project called Portal, which combines the talents of Paul Masvidal, Sean Reinert, guitarist Jason Gobel, bassist Chris Kringel, and vocalist Aruna Abrams. There’s even some demos already up on YouTube (like the one above), so really, seriously, total shame on me for not knowing about this. But, hey, I’m excited to learn about it now!

The group apparently demoed ten songs together seventeen years ago (!!!), and those songs will finally see the light of day in March, when Season of Mist releases The Portal Tapes. Here’s a statement regarding the release from Mr. Masvidal himself:

“I never thought this day would come. A couple demos we’d record after Focus, under the name ‘Portal,’ would develop a life of their own, and somehow become part of Cynic‘s larger discography. As an artist, it’s an amazingly unpredictable journey, to see these quiet labors of love, find their way, in their own time.”

The Portal Tapes come out March 27 in North America and March 23 in Europe, and the release will be limited to five-thousand CDs and just one-thousand vinyl copies. We’ll post pre-order info as soon as we get it so none of you miss out. If the aforementioned YouTube demos are any indication, this is definitely gonna be worth owning — which is not at all shocking.

-AR

[via The PRP]

Meditation location #31 – CBA tour – Amstelveen - I found a park across from the venue where I sat next to a small pond. Reflecting in the water directly in front of me was an upside down tree. I immediately saw in it the classic ‘Sephiroth’ from Kabbalistic (Jewish mysticism) teachings. Also known as the ‘Tree of Life’, the image of the Sephiroth has ten energy centers and is basically a diagram that represents how the universe came into being. It’s often seen as linked to the human body. Do a Google image search to get an idea.

Some views consider the Sephiroth to be like a spiritual map, or a neophyte’s key to understanding hyper-dimensional physics. It’s also viewed as the path of a soul’s incarnation in the physical (as we know it) third dimension. Sounds complex, but all this esoteric language has been reduced to bare bones practicality since the post-Madonna endorsement. Her late 90′s album Ray Of Light was a Kabbalah-inspired coming-out record. She essentially introduced pop culture to these teachings and made the ‘red’ string bracelet a valuable piece of yarn. I don’t discount it’s potency for a minute since the placebo effect alone can work wonders on any believing human, and all power to ‘em.

Go to any big city Kabbalah center or website and you’ll find these bright pop colored coffee table books written in huge fonts elucidating the essence of the teachings. It can almost appear like candy-coated spiritual materialism on the surface, but inside those eye-catching flashy book covers is some good old universal truth, as found in any great spiritual tradition. They make it all seem blaringly obvious and common sense-like. Jews tend to be good at that!

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Cynic’s Paul Masvidal has been chronicling the band’s U.S. and European Carbon-Based Anatomy tour as part of his Metta Mind Journal column here on MetalSucks over the past few days. Check out previous entries here. Today’s meditations come from the band’s tour stops in Copenhagen and Hamburg.

Meditation location #29 – CBA tour – Lyngsby / Copenhagen, Denmark - Sold out show! The most interesting part of my day was photographing these white berries I saw on a small barren tree just outside the venue. From afar they looked like glowing little alien pods in this dark patch of foliage. In one of my photographs, a sprite appeared as one of the pods; it was a centipede-like nymph with the face of a baby dove seal.

I meditated on the emergency ladder, at rooftop height and listened to the freeway on my left, as I quieted the mind and took refuge in stillness. What a gift it truly is to have meditation in life.

I had one person ask me post-show what ‘karmic thread’ means. He was referring to the song “Carbon-Based Anatomy.” I told him that I understood it to be that we’re all accumulating karma on a daily basis by our actions, and there’s a ‘thread’ we’re connected to (according to certain spiritual traditions, this would include past lives), that ultimately ripens. It appears in a more obvious way during the ‘dramatic periods’ of our life. The connective tissue of the karmic thread is always there, so as we accumulate merit with our ability to surrender/love or do the opposite, like going backwards, this thread essentially holds the energetic imprint of our soul. It’s who we’ve always been, mapped out like a universal grid ready to manifest as needed based on personal and collective energy.

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Cynic’s Paul Masvidal has been chronicling the band’s U.S. and European Carbon-Based Anatomy tour as part of his Metta Mind Journal column here on MetalSucks over the past few days. Check out previous entries here. Today’s meditations come from the band’s tour stops in Berlin and Osnabrück, Germany. 

Meditation location #27 – CBA tour. Berlin – Mark, our stage manager, whose bones are built of hearty Aussie stock, warned me with ‘it’s cold out there!’, as I stepped outside. When Mark says it’s cold, I listen. Rain! sleet!! hail!!! snow!!! Repeat… then came the WIND! Holy shit. Our bus driver Max was kind enough to walk Erin (our tour manager) and I up to a nearby restaurant where he treated us to a delicious breakfast.

Berlin has a sprawling big city vibe, packed with humans doing things. My sight line was immediately filled with graffiti. I can appreciate street art in most cities… in this area of Berlin, it’s nearly everywhere you look, like a backdrop. What’s interesting is that, an outsider looking in, at first glance, might think it’s a rough neighborhood == with our ghetto pop culture association to graffiti — although I realized quickly this area was far from ghetto. I think they might actually appreciate the street art aesthetic around here. The neighborhood outside the bus was filled with little boutique hipster stores selling t-shirts, jeans, vinyl, etc, along with the miscellaneous Turkish (falafel), and trendy, posh restaurants.

The streets were busy, and all the humans braving the weather encouraged me to do the same. I found myself up on a bridge where I took some photos, one of which was of a bicyclist riding towards me, squinting his eyes to protect himself from the hail. My feet were drenched. I only packed one pair on this tour and they’re kinda like vans in that they’re made of a sponge-like canvas. I’m reminded of last night’s rain, which was making a beautiful sound. I heard it from inside my bunk as it hit the roof of our bus. The flurry of drops had this complex rhythm going like some new school drum and bass meets electronic white noise. I wanted to record some of it, but was too tired to grab my phone.

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Cynic are currently on tour in Europe, so vocalist/guitarist Paul Masvidal has decided to revive his Metta Mind Journal MetalSucks column in the form of a tour diary. Earlier this week we published the first group of entries from the U.S. portion of the tour and the first few European dates, yesterday we published Paul’s meditations from Vienna and Budapest, and today we follow with Slovakia and Prague.

Meditation location #25 – CBA tour. Slovakia – We rushed out of the bus and I went into a cafe / bar connected to the venue. Tobacco companies are making a killing in these parts. Across the board, folks of all ages puffing away. I couldn’t hang in the smokiness, so I walked further down the road and found a cafe that was warm and had some ginger tea, in a non-smoking room. Across the street was a park with a large sculpture of a poetically shaped human. Just behind it, underneath its ‘behind’ I sat on my behind and meditated. Surrounding me was a busy city, while various pedestrians made their way across the park. Considering the rough and seemingly dirty aesthetics of these city streets, I found it balanced by a general attractiveness amongst the Slovakian people.

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Cynic are currently on tour in Europe, so vocalist/guitarist Paul Masvidal has decided to revive his Metta Mind Journal MetalSucks column in the form of a tour diary. Yesterday we published the first group of entries from the U.S. portion of the tour and the first few European dates, and today we have longer meditations from Vienna and Budapest. More will follow in the coming days.

Meditation location #23 – CBA tour. Vienna – Woke up feeling melancholic. Maybe it’s my sensitive, organic nature interacting with the dark, grey weather I saw from my bunk window. I brushed my teeth, had some fruit, and meditated in an open field across from a stage for, I’m guessing… summer concerts. I’ll be an intentional airhead today and sink into my body. I walked, and walked, and walked. On my way back to the venue I came upon a mall, and walked to the end of a long corridor on the 3rd floor where I found a music store. Some kid in the back was playing Nirvana’s Teen Spirit and then went into Aerosmith’s Dream On. Just by viewing the back of his body and how he held the guitar I could see he was a natural player. I mentally wished him happiness on his musical journey and left the store.

This day marked the 1/2 way point for our 19 shows in 19 days tour. 19 in numerology adds up to the #1. I’m trusting in the auspiciousness of 19 today. And even if that’s not worth holding onto, I’ll let it be my number for today. When I got back to the bus, I noticed everyone was a bit grumpy and irritable. Tour busses form their own field around them like a single organism. They collectively think and feel together over time. I realized being the human sponge that I am, I was just absorbing the vibes of our collective muck, and with just that one insight I could now play with the yucky energy that was floating around. Likes / dislikes, the game of good and bad. It’s a parade of arguing with reality and believing that our argument is of any good. So I come back to this moment and just breathe deep, for this moment is all I really have and all I really need. It’s that simple.

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Cynic have been on tour for approximately the past month and a half, starting with their headlining performance at the inaugural Metal Suckfest, trekking across the country to the West Coast, then skipping over to Europe. What started as an effort by Paul Masvidal to simply chronicle each day’s meditation with a brief thought and a photo has evolved into an in-depth daily journal, so Paul thought it would be a good time to revive his Metta Mind Journal column on MetalSucks. These journals are also available via Paul’s Facebook page.

Paul began the diary on the tour’s fifth day, in the Detroit suburb of Pontiac, Michigan. While his early entries are brief they’re no less interesting to read than the later ones which are much longer and more introspective. We’ve decided to group those early entries together and publish them all today, #5 through #22, which takes us through Slovenia. Tomorrow we’ll pick up with entry #23 from Vienna where Paul really starts to expand the scope of his journal entries.

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A week ago, just a few days before they closed the The Metal Suckfest and a mere twenty-fours before their first proper performance with their new line-up, Cynic performed an extremely rare, extremely intimate acoustic set at one of our favorite NYC haunts, Idle Hands. I have no idea what the final head count in the bar was, but I know that the vast majority of the world’s Cynic devotees did not get to experience this truly special event.

Luckily, our friends from Metal Injection were there, and they caught it on video! You can check out the performance of “Veil of Maya” and “Evolutionary Sleeper” below; if you head over to Metal Injection, you can also check out a new interview with Cynic’s Paul Masvidal and Sean Reinert, which was conducted outside of a synagogue. Just a fun fact for ya!

Cynic’s new EP, Carbon-Based Anatomy, comes out on November 15 via Season of Mist; if you don’t buy it, you’re a loser. Just sayin’.

-AR

So, oh, hey, you might have heard about this, but Cynic closed our festival this past Saturday night. It was only the second show for the band’s new line-up, but they killed, and the new material from their forthcoming EP, Carbon-Based Anatomy, just KILLED. Then Paul Masvidal said some very nice things about our website from the stage, and then I fainted, and when I woke up, it was over and everyone had gone home.

ANYWAY, one of those new songs from Carbon-Based Anatomy, is now streaming at NPR, and it’s freakin’ great, and you need to go listen to it. It is accompanied by a very nice interview with Mr. Masvidal, too, so really just get your ass to NPR right now.

Carbon-Based Anatomy comes out November 15 via Season of Mist; if for some reason you’re still convinced that you need to own it, please read my review here.

-AR

The Inaugural Metal Suckfest is almost here!!!! Twenty bands will DESTROY The Gramercy Theatre on November 4 and 5, PLUS there’s an awesome, five-band pre-party at the venue the night before, making this THE can’t-miss hang of the year.

Tickets are on sale now right here, and you can hit up the fest’s official website for more info on the shows, including the complete line-up. In the meantime, we’re counting down to this weekend of chaos and debauchery by speaking to one member from each band on the bill. We continue today with guitarist/vocalist Paul Masvidal of Cynic, whose new EP, Carbon-Based Anatomy, comes out November 11 via Season of Mist (read our review here). And in case you didn’t know, Pal also sometimes blogs for MetalSucks, too!

Read our chat after the jump. And don’t forget to check back in the coming days and weeks for interviews with more of the musicians participating in this awesome event!!!

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If Carbon-Based Anatomy, the new EP from Cynic, is any indication, then the band’s 2008 reunion released, Traced in Air, was just the tip of the sword in terms of what we can expect from their future. While distinctly Cynical, Anatomy doesn’t really feel like anything the group has ever previously released; guitarist/vocalist Paul Masvidal and drummer Sean Reinert sound somehow looser and more free than ever before, like a now-wholly autonomous artistic unit with no one to please but themselves. The results are mind bending and achingly gorgeous, if perhaps too brief to satiate the desires of Cynic devotees clamoring for new material.

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UPDATE, 12:08 P.M.: The band’s new single, “Carbon-Based Anatomy,” is now avail for free download here!!! Thanks to The PRP for gettin’ the scoop!!!

Ever since we announced Cynic would headline Night 2 of The Metal Suckfest we’ve been seing a bunch of emails and comments wondering just who exactly would be playing bass and second guitar in the band’s live lineup since bassist Robin Zielhorst and guitarist Tymon Kruidenier (both of Dutch fusion metal outfit Exivious) parted ways with Cynic in December 2010. Truth is we didn’t even know ourselves, but we figured Paul Masvidal and Sean Reinert would find suitable replacements in time; and, of course, they have.

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A song can be like the Kennedy assassination: Your first knowledge of it is an event, so you can’t help but forever remember the moment when it came barging into your once-perfectly sane life. The song changes you a little and takes on an aura (or whatever) that stirs you physically for years. It’s a personal thing, but as a confident professional, I’ll limb out and share one: Foreigner’s “I Want To Know What Love Is.” That song was the end of innocence for me; music was no longer purely magical, a series of neat sounds emitting from a crappy clock radio. To my young ears, music had grown horns, all malevolent, capable of harm and cynicism, darkly powerful, and unwilling to compromise. As such, I can instantly recall the view as I stared down at the now-menacing clock radio as I would a dog that had mauled my face unantagonized. This song, I thought, makes life fucking horrible. I eagerly await the day that radio programmers extract the dagger from my nards by cutting it from rotation. Permanently.

Sigh. It was a lonely feeling facing off with the awful choir reprises and pug-faced pseudo-silk of middle-aged Foreigner. But I would rebound years later, when local college radio unleashed upon me Death’s “Suicide Machine,” from their Human album.

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Cynic’s Paul Masvidal has been on something of a hiatus from the world. Aside from a brief announcement about some Cynic lineup changes this past December, we’ve heard precious little about a supposed new Cynic album despite the fact that we presume it’s being worked on. The “summer 2011″ release hinted at in the last update is all but impossible at this point, but thanks to a Facebook update from Masvidal we’ve finally got some solid news to go on:

Ok friends, You got my attention…here’s an official update. I’ve been working away in the home studio writing lots of new songs and keeping off the grid to stay creatively focused. Apologies for having been a bit reclusive in our digital age of informational abundance! It’s safe to say that Cynic already has plenty of material for a new record, but something keeps the inspiration going to write more. I feel like I’m on for the ride and just seeing what manifests as a result of sitting on the train and looking out the window.

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So yesterday, Cynic posted a message on their Facebook page in which they announced the departure of bassist Robin Zielhorst and guitarist Tymon Kruidenier from the band. The reasons are not typical, which is to say, there were no so-called “creative differences” or “disagreements about the direction of the band,” no one is suing anyone or fucked someone’s girlfriend or anything like that. The reason is simple and logistical: Zielhort and Kruidenier live in The Netherlands, while Paul Masvidal and Sean Reinert live in California. So there’s no drama here whatsoever.

And not only is there no drama here, but this isn’t even really bad news. Here’s why:

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Here we had this entire week devoted to hair metal, and I feel like we only scratched the surface. Let’s do this again real soon, okay?

Here’s some of the fun we had this week, be it hair-metal related or not:

• Cynic’s Paul Masvidal taught us to be mind-less, Antagonist’s Carlos Garcia taught us about the song “Sasha Grey,” and Trap Them’s Ryan McKenney taught us more about corporate-sponsored live shows.
• Anso and Allyson from Bring Back Glam! counted down the Ten Best Must-Have Glam Metal Albums.
• We counted down the Top Ten Bands Most Often Miscategorized as Hair Metal.
• Vince spoke with Serj Tankian, Gary spoke with Frankie from Emmure, and Sergeant D. spoke with Samantha Maloney from Brother Clyde/Shift/Hole/Motley Crue/every band ever.
• We debuted a new track by The Binary Code!
• Leyla Ford counted down the ten worst and best hair metal band names.
• Sammy checked out the new release by Eibon.
• Dave Mustein checked out The Cool Tour.
• Someday, this little girl is going to make Sergeant D. very, very unhappy.
• I can’t tell the difference between all the members of Mushroomhead, can you?

I wanna especially thank Allyson from Bring Back Glam! for all her help this week — we love you, Allyson! Come back anytime.

Monday we return, but we’ll have a little less Aqua Net in our hair, a little less eyeliner on our lids, and a lot less skip in our step. See ya then.

-AR

Mind-Less

“When you really understand that you are what you see and know, you don’t run around the countryside thinking, ‘I am all this!’ There is simply all this.” —Alan Watts

The end is near; the end of a cycle. We just rehearsed today for the first time since our last European tour that ended in mid-June. It was like putting on an old pair of jeans. We slipped right in and felt comfortable; relaxed enough to loosen up completely and just have fun. It was the kind of rehearsal I enjoy the most, if I had to rate them.

Today was hot and muggy in Los Angeles. Our rehearsal room was even hotter and muggier than outside — and it worked. The clam factor forced us to give in to the discomfort… and rollick. We said, “Fuck it,” and the music flowed out of our biology like tadpoles consuming life. A raw, uninhibited quality took shape and found a way to be heard. It was pure instinct alongside a carefree sense of humor. We detached and let the music do the work.

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*Compassionate Discrimination

*Compassionate Discrimination: Having astute judgment without being scornfully judgmental; seeing difficult truths about a situation or person without closing your heart or feeling superior. In the words of Alan Jones: having the ability “to smell a rat without allowing your ability to discern deception sour your vision of the glory and joy that is everyone’s birthright.” —from “The Outlaw Catalog of Cagey Optimism” in Rob Brezsny’s book, Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia.

When I was younger, I would easily become attached to people when I first met them, especially if I felt we had a connection—and I would often cry when I had to say good-bye to someone I felt connected to. I still occasionally cry when I’m saying bye to a friend I may not be seeing again for an indefinite period of time. The good-byes are encapsulated mini-deaths that force me to let go. Perhaps the attachment stems from a childhood of constant renewal, instability, and change. It’s the kid in me wanting to hold on for just one more minute because back then, I never could. Eventually, I learned that friendships change and evolve in their own unique way.

I’ve been thinking about what it means to have friends, what it means to be one—and how we often think that we’ll know our friends for a lifetime, or that they’ll always be around. The truth is, like everything in life, our closest friendships are always changing and growing, and may eventually end. Some friendships will grow apart and other people I never felt close to may someday grow near.

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Dio died. Isis broke-up. Bret Michaels is back in the hospital. And I just used Dio, Isis, and Bret Michaels in one thought-stream, which, I’m sure, offended somebody.

Luckily, we did manage to have some fun this week:

• Sick of it All’s Lou Koller is counting down his top ten hardcore albums, As I Lay Dying’s Nick Hipa is counting down to the end of L O S T, Batillus’ Fade Kainer is counting down ’til the band can get the fuck outta the studio, Agenda of Swine’s Pete Benumb is counting down to MDF, and Cynic’s Paul Masvidal is counting down to achieving a higher level of being.
• We spoke to Steve Joh from Century Media, Tara Johnson from Disembodied, Emil Werstler from Daath and Levi/Werstler, and Travis Stever from Coheed & Cambria.
• We checked out the latest release from Rosetta.
• Sergeant D. has new slamz 4 u.
• The best music video ever of the week is by… Goldfrapp?
• There are plenty of things we’d rather do than listen to a new Attack Attack! song.
• Endorsement of the new Avenged Sevenfold single = flame war.
• You guys are still arguing about my Korn review. Seriously?
• I’m still upset about John Bush leaving Anthrax again. Seriously.
• We used to love Sweden, but we had to kill it.

And hopefully no one awesome will die or break-up next week.

-AR

Slender Threads

Last week I was having coffee with a couple of friends in a cafe restaurant. One of my buds was sitting across from me on a large table and we were having a hard time hearing each other speak over the noise, so I began to make funny expressions and movements with my hands, embodying a style of humor that an old mate used to perform for a bunch of us when I used to work as a bartender. Back then, Jeff would pretend that he had long hair and would mime shaping it into the form of a Mohawk, or massive spikes protruding from his head. His facial expressions were serious and committed, as though it was a real job to style his invisible hair. He would look into a mirror and prepare his massive punk locks with gels and glue to form these extreme shapes poking out of his cranium. His outstretched arm would perfect the point on each spear, his facial expressions exhibiting great purpose while taking on this important task.

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