I already had a recent repressing of Focus by Cynic. An album that I indeed was very hip to back when it came out. Having heard that the Cats on Death’s Human record had their own band, we all glommed onto dirty hand me down cassette copies of this album. It was hard to come by in the local record stores and I don’t even recall if it ever got an early CD release.

Here we are 30 years later and everyone claims this as an influence, and maybe that’s the case, but I know they got very little love in the death metal underground at the time. But for many musicians in the scene, this was the high water mark for many, many years to come, and is still remembered as a timeless classic. Now that 2/3 of the original lineup have left us, we’re left with reissues and remixes, and maybe the occasional record Paul decides to put out.

So what’s the point of yet another re-mixing of Focus? I don’t know, but I bought it anyways.

First impression, more lows, and low mids overall, better stereo separation on guitars, but still hopelessly scraggly and washed out sounding as ever, which was always the biggest let down of this record.

One day I’ll spin these side by side to see the difference, but I can’t help but feeling like someone cranked a “bass” knob on a cheap EQ. And since I listen direct into a mixer and powered studio monitors, well, that’s not the case.

#vinyl #nowlistening #deathmetal #progressivemetal #musicsundays #turntable