Cynic is doing a short reunion tour through Europe, playing a number of festivals and some club gigs. Local supports were brought in as the band hadn’t brought any. In this case the band Dutch band Detonation.

Detonation plays a fast paced melodic death metal that sometimes reminds me of early Gothenburg style bands like In Flames. The whole musical aspect is centred around the lead guitar, but the band seems to have forgotten to write good riffs. The riffs they have are uber-simple and vanish behind the lead guitar, which isn’t bad. Anyway they already seem to have released three albums and played songs of each one. After an half hour they were done and that was more than enough – this isn’t the kind of music that I can appreciate.

Then Cynic. This American band was around in the early nineties and then released only a single album titled “Focus”. Half the band can also be found on the “Human” album by the band Death. The stage was set-up a bit strangely with the drumkit at the back in a corner, which leaves a large open space in the middle. They played the entire “Focus” album, added a new song, played a cover from Mahavishnu Orchestra and included a song from Portal. The live experience displayed the technicality and complexity with complex drum patterns and bass lines, that are all over, whilst not forgetting actual songs. Although sometimes it all becomes a bit woolly. An interesting experiment was that all the grunts were played from a tape, except for the song “Uroboric Forms”. They had held an internet contest to select a singer per show to do the grunts on this song. All in all a very different kind of show than I’m used to but well worth it.