Focus

The album was recorded at Morrisound Recording in Tampa, Florida, with Scott Burns producing. It was made in the same room as the Florida death metal of the day, and what came out of it sounds like nothing else from there. The singing is put together unusually. Paul Masvidal was in danger of losing his voice at the time, so the harsh growls were sung by the keyboard player, Tony Teegarden. Masvidal ran his own vocals through a vocoder, which gives them a synthetic quality. He wrote the words, which deal with seeing the world as a whole, telling the real from the illusory, and concentration and meditation. Eastern mysticism runs through them, and the outlook is positive and humble from end to end — rare qualities in this genre. The sleeve uses Angelic Manifestation, painted in 1974 by the surrealist Robert Venosa. Masvidal travelled to meet the painter and chose the picture after hours of conversation with him. Roadrunner issued a remastered edition in 2004 with six further tracks. The running order here is the original's as printed.