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Cynic is celebrating the 30th anniversary of their album Focus and what better way to do that than to go on tour and play the whole album. For the occasion they asked the band Atheist to tag along for the festivities. Fans gathered at the Fairmount Theater in Montreal to be part of this special occasion.

Surprisingly, there are no local act and Atheist comes on stage to the music of Pink Floyd’s "In The Flesh?" before punishing the crowd with the brutal riff of "No Truth". Kelly Shaefer is the only original band member but his new crew is exceptional and you can see the chemistry between them, even if they did not play together for a long time. As usual, the mix of progressive death metal, thrash and jazz might be confusing to some, but most fans are either banging their heads to the music or pushing each other. Fans will notice immediately Yoav Ruiz-Feingold on bass, he’s a human tornado on stage, or the Tasmanian Devil, this guy is always on the move and never gets tired. The playing of newcomer Alex Haddad on guitar is simply breathtaking, it is precise and he makes it look so easy. Kelly is all smiles throughout the set and you can see that he likes to play in Montreal. The band focused their set on their album Unquestionable Presence by playing seven out of its eight tracks, only the album closer "And the Psychic Saw" was left out.

Drummer Dylan Marks is also very present with his drumming prowess and multiple time signature changes. The end of their set was particularly brutal with the successions of the songs "Unquestionable Presence", "Mother Man’" and "Piece Of Time". The band gave another awesome show and it was great to see them play a full set of an hour and a half.

It was now time for Cynic to play in Montreal, a first since 2011, if you exclude their short set a Heavy Montreal back in 2014. We can see on stage a banner with the faces of the late band members Sean Malone (bass) and Sean Reinert (drums).

As stated earlier, this tour is a celebration of their 1993 album and rightfully so, they play all the songs in the same order as they were on the album. There is almost no crowd interaction and the band lets the music from that album do all the talking. Max Phelps (guitar/vocals), Brandon Giffin (bass) and Matt Lynch (drums) are joining Paul Masvidal on this tour. There is a great contrast between Paul’s mechanized voice and the death vocals of Max. The stage lights are dark and even if that matches the mood of the music, it is just a little too dark at some moments. The band left the stage after the song ‘How Could I’, the last song of the Focus album.

They came back after a short break to continue with the songs "Kindly Bent To Free Us", "Adam's Murmur", "In A Multiverse Where Atoms Sing" and lastly, "Evolutionary Sleeper". During this whole musical experience, you could see Atheist’s guitar player Jerry Witunsky having the time of his life.  That was also the case of so many fans that were enjoying this surreal moment as much as him.

This was certainly not your typical metal concert and fans loved every second of it! This is a highly recommended event and one that should not be missed by any progressive metal fan.