Paul Masvidal

Paul Albert Masvidal (born January 20, 1971) is an American musician, best known as the guitarist, singer and a founding member of the progressive metal band Cynic.

He has remained a continual member in Cynic for nearly three decades and has developed numerous other projects including Æon Spoke, Onward with Love, and Masvidal (a solo project).

Masvidal was ranked in Loudwire 's 66 Best Hard Rock + Metal Guitarists of All Time and 50 Best Metal Songwriters of All Time.

Paul Masvidal was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico to Cuban-American civic and business leader Raúl Masvidal.

Masvidal's early years were spent in the Miami area where he studied classical guitar with Carlos Molina, and in college, with jazz musician, Dave Weissbrot who inspired his love of jazz, Steinberger guitars, and introduced him to Buddhist philosophy.

Masvidal developed an interest in mysticism and Esoteric topics from a young age, becoming an initiate to Kriya Yoga in his late teens and eventually a practitioner of Buddhist meditation by his late 20s.

Masvidal met drummer Sean Reinert in 1984 at Gulliver Academy In Miami, where the duo began making music the day they met, eventually forming the pre-Cynic groups, Crypha and Seaweed.

While still at school, Masvidal had formed Crypha along with Sein Reinert.

The duo later teamed up with their classmates Reid Hansen and Rod Segal to form Seaweed.

The band eventually recorded a song called The Seaweed Creature, that was based upon a little doodle Reid would play on an acoustic guitar.

In an interview with Hungarian heavy metal magazine Rattle Inc., Segal mentioned:"'The band was never meant to be a long term thing. It was four friends messing around... Sean and Paul had bigger ideas by then and went off to music school.'"Masvidal and Reinert eventually disbanded Seaweed and went on to form Cynic.

Masvidal co-founded Cynic with drummer Sean Reinert in the late 80s, having released four demos from 1988 to 1991 that circulated in the underground tape trading community.

Masvidal developed a reputation in the South Florida music scene for his musicianship and attention began to grow quickly around the band.

In 1989, while still in high school, Masvidal toured Mexico as a replacement guitarist for the band Death, but declined an invitation to permanently join the band to remain committed to Cynic.

This had many journalists curious at the time, since Death were emerging as an influential and popular act, but Masvidal persevered with Cynic.

However, Masvidal returned to the Death fold replacing guitarist James Murphy for tour dates on the international Spiritual Healing tour in 1990.

In 1991, Masvidal and fellow Cynic member Reinert were recruited by Death to record the "groundbreaking" Human.

After fulfilling their obligations with Death, both Masvidal and Reinert returned to Cynic in 1992.

1993 saw the release of the "progressive landmark" album, Focus on Roadrunner Records.

Focus was listed in Rock Hard magazine's book as one of The 500 Greatest Rock & Metal Albums of All Time.

Loudwire writer Graham Hartmann named Focus the ninth best debut metal album of all time.

Cynic took a 12-year hiatus in 1995 after recording "The Portal Tapes" demos.

Masvidal moved to Los Angeles in the fall of 1996, upon being offered a full scholarship at Musicians Institute, where he also began work as a session musician and composer for network TV and film.

During Cynic's hiatus, Masvidal founded Æon Spoke, whose ethereal indie rock was heralded as "beautiful, exquisite [and] destined for greatness" by Janice Long, BBC Radio.

Roadrunner released a reissue of Focus in 2004 as a special collector's edition due to high demand.

In 2004, the band received airplay on BBC Radio 2 and XFM for the single "Silence".

The following year, the track "Emmanuel" appeared in the indie breakout film What the Bleep Do We Know!? Æon Spoke songs have also appeared on the Warner Bros. television series Smallville, One Tree Hill and the motion picture Cry Wolf.

Human was Death's bestselling album, and was ranked number 82 on the October 2006 issue of Guitar World magazine's list of the greatest 100 guitar albums of all time.

Masvidal toured extensively for Human, in addition to appearing in the music video for "Lack of Comprehension", which debuted on MTV's Headbangers Ball.

Their self-titled debut LP was released in 2007 on SPV Records."'Masvidal creates an air of loss, longing and bereavement which is unparalleled in the field. Even in the alternative rock scene, where such voices are replete, his stands above in its emotional impact. Couple this with layered, acoustic guitars, haunting, rusty synths where needed and drumming which ties the whole thing into a neat, digestible package and you get Aeon Spoke. It's a powerful, yet oddly simple at times, side project which channels the melancholy and estrangement that had always laced Cynic's main body of work.' – Karlo Doroc, Heavy Blog is Heavy"

Cynic reunited in 2008 to record Traced in Air, their comeback opus.

In his review, New York Times music critic Ben Ratliff wrote that Cynic "should be understood not so much alongside any metal bands but along with the radical harmonic progressives in the last 45 years of pop and jazz: composers like Milton Nascimento, the Beach Boys or Pat Metheny."

Huffington Post described it as "A Modern Classic."

In 2010 and 2011 Cynic released two conceptual records: Re-Traced (2010), featuring re-interpretations of several Traced in Air tracks, and Carbon-Based Anatomy (2011).

Rolling Stone music critic Hank Shteamer raved in his review of Carbon-Based Anatomy: "The title track is a perfectly paced stunner...Cynic sounds fully liberated, not just from their metal past but from any aesthetic concern other than assembling a great song."

The album's opening track "Amidst The Coals" features artist, Amy Correia singing an adaptation of an Amazonian Icaro, inspired by Masvidal's work with the South American entheogenic brew, Ayahuasca.

In 2013, Masvidal joined forces with other original members of the Death Human line up and toured worldwide in honor of Chuck Schuldiner's legacy with the group DTA (Death to All).

Cynic's third full-length album, Kindly Bent to Free Us, released in 2014, was hailed by Malcome Dome of Prog magazine as "an album that transcends all the limitations of genre and era... There are few albums which can claim such a remarkable hold."

The album rose to No. 4 on Billboard 's Heatseekers chart in February 2014 and was No. 1 on CMJ 's Loud Rock Chart the following month.

In 2017, Rolling Stone magazine placed the album as the 70th greatest metal albums of all time.