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CYNICAL SMILE - latest update 18th APRIL 2004
Ed giving it some live CYNICAL SMILE........"Southend's  Cynical Smile are immediate and arresting, a web of tensile, finely chiselled grooves that sound like they're bracing themselves as close to breaking point as they can physically get. There aren't many bands around who are as articulate as this, who can hit and sustain a state of urgency so severely that they never lapse into melodrama, never break the spell"  Metal Hammer
BAND BIOG 
The original Southend metalcore band..  Everyone has been in The Smile at some point, bands like Understand, Above All, Pepperman - they've all evolved out of Cynical Smile. In fact, no one in Southend can remember who started the Cynics; Frontman Ed remembers being the drummer in the early days but then he left the band and the area, came back a couple of years later, found the band still going (with different personnel) and rejoined as singer...  It's a complicated story that started to come to life when the band decided they were going to tour with CIV: they did this by turning up in their van at the airport and greeted the Americans with "Hi, we're your support band and we're here to drive you around, you're staying at our place." They blagged the whole tour - confused promoters swore they couldn't remember booking The Smile.. they got away with it every night and gave out a sack load of demo tapes to enthusiastic crowds, got themselves on a couple of underground compilation albums and then got invited to tour with Shelter (word got around about the hospitality and downright good attitude of this band of Essex wide-boy geezers). The first serious recordings emerged on the Organ Radio 2 compilation CD (along with Medulla Nocte, Assert, FLS and more....), the reaction was good and the band called us to tell us they were going to release an album with ORG (they never have managed to grasp the right way of doing things, isn't the record label supposed to ask the band?) - the debut album STUPAS was recorded almost live in one week (although, you'd never know, it actually sounds like we spent quite a bit of dosh on the beautiful thing). The album found them moving away from their original hardcore sound and heading into more musically accomplished areas -

Cynical Smile followed up the well received Stupas album with a five track EP called "The Circle" featuring two tracks from the album. a blinding beat heavy remix of Stitch from Southend techno-heads VITRO and a couple of demo versions of new tracks that'll give you an idea of how things were maturing and developing... and just because we could do it, the Cynics and us threw on a bonus of twelve tracks from twelve bands that Cynical Smile have encountered at gigs and thought you should hear more about - CALL IT REAL FAMILY VALUES.... You'll find bands like Cay, Sugargun, Liberty 37, Scarehead, Monkeyboy and more, Indeed, find out more on the RADIO ORGAN page.

NEXT MOVES:  1999 - CYNICAL SMILE are following their recent headline UK tour (with good friends Earthtone 9 in tow) by going back in to the studio to work on the second album "RETURN OF THE INVISIBLE PEOPLE" - right now it looks like it's going to be a double CD concept album with lots of unexpected things, more collaborations with Vitro as well as something they're cooking up with FAITHLESS. Gigs are a little thin on the ground while they concerntrate on the second album but the tracks coming through now are far far in advance of the first album...

Well we actually wrote that last moves bit in 1999, it's gone rather quiet since then.

hang on, we've got some finished tracks - CATCH THE LATEST TRACK ON ORGAN RADIO TEN and TWELVE - Is it the start of the second phase? Where are they today? Either working on the new album in Southend or surfing in Portugal

JULY 14th 2002: I GUESS THEY WENT SURFING..... A band who were ahead of themselves, guess some bands should just release one great album then go away. We loved The Smile and we still love the album...
 
PRESS QUOTES AND SUCH

"Southend's  Cynical Smile are immediate and arresting, a web of tensile, finely chiselled grooves that sound like they're bracing themselves as close to breaking point as they can physically get. There aren't many bands around who are as articulate as this, who can hit and sustain a state of urgency so severely that they never lapse into melodrama, never break the spell"  Metal Hammer

"Don't you just love it when a plan comes together? Southend's Cynical Smile have really pulled their finger out on this, their debut album. Recorded in five days, 'Stupas' once again highlights the fact that we have some glorious home-grown talent of our own, and frankly don't need to rely on our friends across the pond for crushing music........ the grinning east coast boys have developed a more noticeably hardcore edge that bubbles over with anger, yet retains all the melodic power necessary to ensure each tune doesn't so much grab your attention as starts squeezing..... Admittedly, there are hints of Rage Against The Machine and even Helmet in places, but otherwise their sound is distinctive, if not unique....."   KKKK  Kerrang

".....They're seemingly more and more like like the English Stuck Mojo - Stupas is stupefyingly good and well worth your time and money" - Terrorizer 

"The album is a British masterpiece" - Big Issue 

"....A slippery world of con tricks and double-talk where trust and suspicion grate against each other" - Misfit City
RELEASES ON ORG RECORDS
organ030   Three tracks on ORGAN RADIO 2 CD album Friends/Stitch (demo version)/More Bones Than Chicken

organ035 STUPAS CD album - The Circle/Scum/Live4/Gunga-Din/Killing Bugs/When Friends Become Enemies/Feeling Retarded/Methadone/Stitch/Limbo/Give Up The Ghost

organ037    Four track split sampler tape (with GNA) - two Cynical tracks Feeling Retarded/Limbo

organ042    Track on ORGAN RADIO 4    cd album  Feeling Retarded

org050        The Circle CDep  The Circle/Pro-Tection/Stitch (Vitro Remix)/Clone The Clowns/Stitch (plus bonus 13 tracks from other bands, Organ Radio 3)

org052        Track on Organ Radio 6 CD album The Circle

org053        Track on Organ Radio 7 CD (bonus tracks on MUY FEO ep)  Methadone

org055        2 Tracks on Organ Radio 8 CD album Stitch (Vitro Remix)/Clone The Clowns

org062        Track on Organ Radio 10  CD album When Your Down (demo version)

ORG203    TRACK ON ORGAN RADIO 12 album CONFESSION #1

Releases elsewhere on other labels: 
THERE'S been various tracks on compilations from Kerrang, Household Name and Lockjaw. 
 
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