CYNIC singer/guitarist Paul Masvidal (ex-DEATH) spoke to Blistering recently about a number of topics including the band's reunion album, Traced In Air. Here are a few excerpts from the chat:

Blistering.com: Fifteen years removed from Focus, what stoked the fires to get back in and do a new album?

Masvidal: "It started with the 2007 reunion tour which happened as the result of a bunch of synchronicities. It started with a dream from a Russian fan where he went to a festival and Cynic played and it was really cool. Then after that email, there was a series of events that brought Cynic back into my life and there were probably seven total in the course of two weeks that were just…one of those if I was willing to pay attention – which I was – the universe was saying, “You need to get back together.” It was the combination of more phone calls, emails; just Sean (Reinert) and I had the same dream, and then Kelly (Shaffer) from ATHEIST calls and tells me I have to do this.

We had really closed the door on Cynic and never intended to open it again, then all of sudden it appeared dramatically in a concentrated period of my life and I just responded to it. I called Sean and at one point and said, “We got to do this” and that was the beginning of the reunion process. We didn’t intend to make a record. We just thought we’d get out there and share Focus with people again and that generation that didn’t get to see us back in the day. We got back from the tour, and had “Evolutionary Sleeper” that we played just as an experiment. It was a song I had that felt very Cynic-like to me and the response was really incredible, almost on the verge of overwhelming. I got home from the tour, sat down and looked at my stuff and developed ideas and started developing some stuff. I got Sean in here, jammed, worked out ideas and we knew, after a couple of rehearsals, that we had something to say, our return was purposeful."

Blistering.com: Are any of these songs left over from the period in 1994 when you were trying to do the follow-up to Focus?

Masvidal: Everything is brand new. I’d say 10% of the album is the stuff from my library, just miscellaneous ideas I developed further. The post-Focus period for us is Portal. We recorded 10 songs that were where we were going, which was not Cynic at all. It was a whole different sound and we brought in a female vocalist and got really mellow without any distortion. That was where we were in ’94. We wouldn’t be able to make this record back then. We were in a completely different place. Curiously, it seems for us to have taken this long just makes sense. This is the record we were supposed to make as an album #2 because there really wasn’t a second album in the mid-90’s for us."

Blistering.com: On the live front, how are you going to balance the two albums?

Masvidal: "For the Euro tour with Opeth, I think we’re getting 45 minutes, which is pretty good. We’re going to do a combination of the new record and the highlights from Focus and what is really great is now we have enough tunes to mix it up and try different things. It will be an experiment, but it’s all about Traced in Air right now."

Blistering.com: What were some of your fondest memories being in Death and doing the Human album in ’91?

Masvidal: "It’s weird. It’s blurry at this point, but Chuck was a friend from childhood and someone I had a relationship [with] for years, way before we made Human. It felt natural and easy to make the record with him. It was a part of our evolution as friends; it made sense to make a record together. He was somebody I had a lot of respect for. He brought Sean and I into the thick of the music industry and gave us a lot of experience that you don’t get at that age. I’m grateful for that. I’m grateful for seeing how he worked and his dedication to his craft. He was definitely dedicated to what he was doing. Chuck was in his own head and had his own vibe which was completely different from what we were doing. Seeing someone that was out there making a living as an artist, working and all that was really cool."

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