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Focus (Cynic album)

1993 studio album by Cynic

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 22, 2026
Entity authorityQ1435071 ↗
Source-derived summary

Focus is the debut studio album by American metal band Cynic, released September 14, 1993, through Roadrunner Records. A remastered version of the album was released in 2004.

Background and release

The album was recorded at Morrisound Recording in Tampa, Florida and was produced by Scott Burns.

For the album's cover art, Masvidal chose the 1974 painting "Angelic Manifestation" by surrealist artist Robert Venosa. He traveled to meet Venosa in person and later recalled, “I encountered someone who was incredibly kind and humble. He immediately put me at ease. We spoke for hours and explored what the music meant to say in terms of a visual context. He helped me to understand the relationship between the visual and auditory medium’s and how they would become one and the same if all was aligned.” He also chose a Venosa painting for the band's follow-up album Traced in Air.

In 2004 Roadrunner Records released a remastered version of Focus, which contained the original eight tracks and six bonus tracks. Three of these were remixes by John Hiler, while the three other songs are taken from the members' post-Cynic project Portal's eponymous demo.

Editorial summary

“Focus (Cynic album)” enters the record as 1993 studio album by Cynic. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Focus, Cynic and album can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewBest approached as a cultural-object dossier: authorship and date matter, but circulation and reception often explain the wider significance. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1993, 2004, 1974—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1993-01-01. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Focus, Cynic and album.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Focus (Cynic album)” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Focus, Cynic and album provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1435071. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1993, 2004 and 1974.

Critical limits

Titles can refer to several editions, objects or performances, making precise identification essential before interpretation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Focus (Cynic album)”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Focus (Cynic album) primary sources, Focus (Cynic album) archive and Focus research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Focus (Cynic album)”?
  2. How did later circulation or interpretation alter the work’s reception?
  3. Where is authorship, date or provenance documented?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Focus (Cynic album)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.