They just keep getting better! Loving the heavier side of the band! Some of their best work!

Brutal. Unrelenting. There truly is "None So Vile". Pristine tech death music.

Its difficult to choose one track to be my favorite. Listening to this album for the first time blew me away with how smooth and reflective it is. It is incredibly calming, but keeps your mind encapsulated within the music at all times. This is truly a masterpiece of modern jazz music. Favorite tracks: Hope, Cremisi, Mankind to Earth.

This album is such a refreshing take on the work of Cynic. Whether it is branded as a work of Cynic, or a work of Portal, it is undeniably unique and fresh in way that couldn't be produced through Cynic. This album was able to take the progressive and spiritual nature of the album Focus, and well, focus on that entirely. It left behind a precognition of progressive metal, and just made a soundtrack expressive of the spirit. The songwriting is fantastic, and I love it in supplement to Cynic.

This album is a wonderful masterpiece, that shows how the thrash nature of Cynic was able to evolve to the progressive nature of the band to come. This album manages to give a different flavor than what we get on focus, and really shocks me with how straight up thrash it could be. I love being able to hear the process, and this demo is the best example of that process. It also just sounds really, really good.

This album was the one to get me serious about music. It was able to express musical ideas and emotions I've just never ever heard before, or imagined being possible. It could only make me think, "this is humanely possible?" and "I need to be able to do this.". I've still never heard an album that is able to be a perfect blend of brutality, progressive music, and spiritual philosophy, in such a way where it expresses itself in its own genre that cannot be labeled by words.

This is simply phenomenal progressive metal music. It sounds absolutely fresh and new compared to any other progressive metal I've listened to, and really stands its ground as a unique album. I would prefer it to Anthropomorphic Analysis.

This is simply phenomenal progressive metal music. It sounds absolutely fresh and new compared to any other progressive metal I've listened to, and really stands its ground as a unique album.

This is an incredibly powerful and inventive progressive metal album. It doesn't get boring once, and is consistently good throughout.

I remember discovering Damian off of YouTube around 2020... just a random recommended video of him playing one of his early pieces... after merely a second, I was hooked. Such inventive and enriching soundscapes were being created with his bass, one which I couldn't imagine beforehand. Truly inspiring to my own playing.