Focus (Cynic Album) - Individual Players

Individual Players

Guitarist/vocalist Paul Masvidal and drummer Sean Reinert had joined Chuck Schuldiner's Death to record the seminal Human. Certain similarities can be heard between the two albums, although Focus only rarely reaches the level of aggression found on Human.

The guitar parts of Masvidal and Jason Gobel intertwine, bringing to mind such guitar duos as Television's Tom Verlaine and Richard Lloyd, or Robert Fripp and Adrian Belew from King Crimson. Only rarely do both guitars play the same part simultaneously; most of the time both guitars have their distinct own parts that tie together to form a fabric of harmonies and melodies, in addition to numerous guitar solos. Masvidal's flowing, Allan Holdsworth-esque solos stand out with their free phrasing.

Masvidal and Gobel use very similar gear throughout the record. Both play a Steinberger brand electric guitar equipped with a Roland MIDI pickup and guitar synthesizer, and both used ADA amplification. Most of the synthesized sounds on the album are generated with these guitar synthesizers, not keyboards. The Steinberger guitars also feature a tremolo system which bends each string an equal amount, allowing the bending of full chord shapes in tune. A demonstration of this is heard in the very first guitar chord of "I'm But A Wave To...".

Sean Malone plays a Kubicki fretless bass nearly throughout the album. The fretless bass has a soft attack and a round, warm sound rather atypical to heavy metal, which usually prefers the punchier attack of fretted bass. On some parts on Focus Malone plays a 12-string Chapman stick instead. Malone's bass lines do not generally follow either guitar part. His lines are often quite busy and create a throbbing rhythmical pulse that syncopates with Reinert's drumwork. He also delivers a rare bass solo on the instrumental track "Textures".

Sean Reinert's drum style meshes together elements from both heavy metal and jazz. He skillfully uses accents, fills and varied dynamics to keep the songs rhythmically vivid. He occasionally plays a 16th-note double bass drum beat to emphasize certain parts of songs, but does not play blast beat on the album. In addition to an acoustic drum kit, he also uses electronic drums on some songs. The introduction to "Sentiment" demonstrates Reinert playing a polymetric beat consisting of several different meters on top of each other.

The vocals of Paul Masvidal and Tony Teegarden alternate between Masvidal's robotic vocoder and Teegarden's guttural death growl, both of which are given equal emphasis on the album. In addition, a female vocalist (Sonia Otey, who also performed with French death metal band Loudblast around the same time) performed on several of the album's tracks.