Artist: Cynicism Management
Label: Self-released
Release: 2011
Runtime: 76:50
Rating: 4.4/5
And there we have it! A real, honest-to-god progressive rock band has popped up on the Slovenian scene again. That’s right. With all the odd, irregular rhythms, complex melodies and structures, and long-ass tracks. The slightly controversial Cynicism Management have set up their project more ambitiously, but also looser and, above all, weirder than any Slovenian band so far. With a pinch of madness and quirkiness, they’re one of the most unique projects in Slovenian music history. What’s more, their project breaks out of the shackles of just one artistic current.
Until recently, Cynicism Management was actually a fictional band, much like Porcupine Tree was just Wilson’s made-up idea. Cynicism Management was a band in a book in the making by the mastermind and drummer Borut Praper (the book will be called “Epic Tales of Cynicism Management” and will come out in English, since the project was originally (and of course still is) aimed at the international market). He describes his idea as a “serialized online literary musical” (he posted the individual stories of the band’s epic adventures on a blog). The music that came out of writing those stories was therefore a side product of purely literary work. Before long, though, the group Borut was working with on the project turned more or less to music, which isn’t unusual, since they’re musicians after all. The group soon started playing live too, so it would have been silly to keep presenting themselves as fictional – and that’s how the live, animated and above all loud Cynicism Management came to be.
So in mid-2011, the album “Tit” saw the light of day. With a meaningful title, which of course suits the band’s stature, this round dark thing (no, I don’t mean the boobs on the cover, I mean the CD) is yet another blend of several artistic fields – first and foremost the music, which comes with excellent lyrics, and second, the graphic design; the whole visual identity of the cover and the booklet inside matches everything the audio side of the record stands for (Matej Peklar, by the way, is the one responsible for it). The album boasts an enviable length, as we listen to these cynical progheads (or rather, progressive cynics) for a good 76 minutes, rounded out across a good dozen tracks. Good because, well, they’re good; and there are, of course, 12 of them.
Between everything above and the track titles, the album is at least partly conceptual. The lyrics are entirely in English, precisely because of the target audience mentioned earlier, even though this is of course their first offensive on the Slovenian scene. But above all, the lyrics are cynical, sarcastic, controversial, vulgar, dark, tongue-in-cheek. You don’t know whether it should crush you or make you laugh. You don’t know if the music is depressing or just subtly funny. Instrumentally it’s definitely more the former. Dark, at times downright metal passages tear the complex melodies apart, and the fantastic singer Monika Fritz accompanies them with growling – that’s also where the lyrical value is strongest and most convincing. Sometimes the music seems repetitive and a little monotonous, but later you can spot a heap of countless little instrumental touches that constantly weave a different thread alongside the vocals. That’s exactly why the album doesn’t just deserve repeated listens, they’re necessary to enjoy it fully and to make the pleasure complete.
Instrumentally, the album is polished, at times excellent, and otherwise very solid by world standards. The great interplay of dark guitar melodies and ambient keys with heavier riffs and loud bass lines serves the vocals and lyrics more than the other way around. The musicians very rarely launch into longer solos, as progressive music would suggest; rather, Cynicism Management are adorned by excellent long intros. Since Borut Praper is a drummer first and foremost, the drums get a lot of attention – in the heavier parts they’re up front, and otherwise they adapt nicely to the higher melody. All in all, the whole album is a collection of enviably good progressive rock and even metal, which the Slovenian scene badly, badly needed.
“Tit” is an album of superlatives and definitely a landmark for Slovenia. A project this experimental, in both its basic concept and its execution, has to be heard and written into the record as a tile in the mosaic that makes up our musical consciousness. Especially for its ambition and, frankly, the balls and brains it took to pull off something like this and everything behind it. And if you’ll excuse me now, I’m off to gaze at the gorgeous rack of the “Tit” disc and listen to the fantastic music of Cynicism Management.
Lineup
Monika Fritz – vocals
Jan Urbanc – guitar
Borut Praper – drums, keyboards, programming, bass guitar, guitar
Aljaž Tulimirović – guitar, bass guitar, kazoo (6, 10, 12)
Stojan Kralj – guitar (10)
Jure Praper – guitar (11)
Production
Borut Praper
Tracklist
1. TV Turns on You
2. Life Malignant
3. Bad Bad Boy
4. Right Humpster
5. Another Place Another Time
6. Iniquity
7. Touring My Backyard
8. Whence She Came
9. Tit
10. Herbal Haze
11. Four-Circle Penile Substitute
12. The End of the Vilewood Road
