CYNIC Announces March 2024 European Tour With OBSCURA

This year, progressive metal pioneers CYNIC celebrated the 30th anniversary of their landmark debut album. Interstellar shredder Paul Masvidal and his band of aliens played “Focus” in all its mind-bending intensity, while also paying tribute to late drummer Sean Reinert and bassist Sean Malone, on a special headlining tour of North America.

Now, CYNIC is busy preparing for its next voyage. The cosmos have conspired to bring the progressive music icons to Europe next March. But this won’t be an ordinary tour, earthlings — the planets have aligned for CYNIC to cross paths with OBSCURA and CRYPTOSIS.

“The Focus Of A Valediction” 2024 European tour dates:

March 08 – Bochum, DE @ Matrix

March 09 – Aschaffenburg, DE @ Colos-Saal

March 10 – Eindhoven, NL @ Dynamo

March 15 – Paris, FR @ Petit Bain

March 16 – Nantes, FR @ Ferrailleur

March 17 – Toulouse, FR @ Le Rex

March 19 – Madrid, SP @ Copernico

March 20 – Barcelona, SP @ La Nau

March 21 – Lyon, FR @ MJC O Totem

March 22 – Aarau, CH @ Kiff

March 23 – Milan, IT @ Slaughter Club

March 24 – Ljubljana, SL @ Orto Bar

March 26 – Munich, DE @ Backstage

March 27 – Berlin, DE @ Hole44

March 28 – Hamburg, DE @ Logo

March 29 – Aarhus, DK @ Voxhall

March 30 – Copenhagen, DK @ Pumpehuset

March 31 – Oslo, NO @ Inferno Festival *

* Only CYNIC

More dates will be announced soon.

CYNIC‘s touring lineup features Masvidal on vocals and guitars, Max Phelps (EXIST, DEATH TO ALL) on additional guitars and vocals, Brandon Giffin (THE FACELESS, THE ZENITH PASSAGE) on bass, Matt Lynch (NOVA COLLECTIVE, INTRONAUT) on drums and percussion, and Zeke Kaplan on the keyboard. Lynch has been drumming with CYNIC since 2015 and appeared on the band’s latest full-length, “Ascension Codes”, as well as the 2018 single “Humanoid”. Additionally, Phelps, having also appeared on “Ascension Codes”, and Giffin have previously toured with CYNIC during the band’s “Carbon Based Anatomy” and “Kindly Bent To Free Us” tours.

Released in 1993, “Focus” is a certified classic. Although that era ended with transformation into the short-lived PORTAL, and then a further splinter toward AEON SPOKE, CYNIC‘s reunion-era has found them embraced in a way that proves how ahead of the times they were in the ’90s. Through monuments such as the “Traced In Air” (2008) and “Kindly Bent To Free Us” (2014) albums, the “Carbon-Based Anatomy” and “Re-Traced” EPs, and a surprising rebirth with the “Humanoid” single of 2018, the CYNIC legacy remains untarnished.

The year 2020 will go down in history as a tremendously difficult time for the global human population. For the CYNIC family, the struggle was not restricted to a pandemic. It was two utterly senseless losses that threw the band’s immediate concerns into the background: the premature deaths of drummer Sean Reinert in January, at age 48, and bassist Sean Malone in December, at age 50, were shocking and unthinkable.

Reinert, a founding CYNIC member since formation in 1988, was highly influential to a multitude of young drummers. His work on “Focus” and DEATH‘s watershed 1991 album “Human” found him sculpting extreme technical metal with a jazz fusion-inspired approach. Now taken for granted, that approach to the instrument and the genre was undoubtedly pioneered in large part by Reinert. Though parting with CYNIC in 2015, his imprint on CYNIC is inescapable.

The death of Sean Malone dealt another horrible layer of tragedy to CYNIC‘s 2020. In his many years with the band, Malone‘s virtuoso playing meshed intuitively with Reinert‘s. Together they formed a nucleus of kinetic, highly capable rhythmic dexterity that fueled CYNIC‘s celestial aims.