He re-joined Cynic with Reinert and Masvidal in May 2008 and recorded on their comeback album titled Traced in Air, which received very high critical acclaim. The album was released 14 years after the release of their previous and highly successful Focus. However, he did not tour with the band because of his university teaching priorities. In September 2011, Cynic confirmed that Malone has recorded on their EP titled Carbon-Based Anatomy. On December 12, 2012, Cynic announced that the band has entered the studio in a trio mode with Malone to record the new album, Kindly Bent to Free Us. In Vancouver on July 6, 2014, Malone performed live on stage with Cynic for the first time in 20 years since the Focus era. Other ventures Malone took a scholarly approach to the subject of pencils, and spent years documenting the cultural significance of the Eberhard Faber Blackwing 602 pencil. He also travelled around the US and Germany, interviewing both Eberhard Faber IV (head of Eberhard Faber in the US) and the late Count Anton von Faber-Castell (head of Faber-Castell in Germany). He was known in pencil circles as the creator of both Blackwing Pages and Contrapuntalism. Malone was interviewed on camera for the 2015 documentary film No. 2: The Story of the Pencil. He mentioned completing almost 300 pages of a pencil book, though he doubted the commercial viability. Malone was a Glenn Gould scholar. He restored and archived the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation Glenn Gould video recordings and documented his research about him. He published the article "Glenn Gould and the Nature of Competition" in Glenn Gould Magazine. Death On December 9, 2020, Paul Masvidal announced that Malone had died. On September 3, 2021, Masvidal publicly announced that Malone died by suicide on December 7, 2020. He would subsequently release a new version of "Integral" featuring a bass track recorded by Malone as a tribute, with half of the proceeds going to suicide prevention organizations To Write Love on Her Arms and The Trevor Project. Discography Cynic Focus (1993) Traced in Air (2008) Carbon-Based Anatomy (2011) Kindly Bent to Free Us (2014) Humanoid (2018) Solo & Gordian Knot Cortlandt (1996) Gordian Knot – Gordian Knot (1999) Gordian Knot – Emergent (2003) Other Anomaly – Anomaly (1998) Aghora – Aghora (2000) OSI – Office of Strategic Influence (2003) John Wesley – A Way You'll Never be... (2016) As a guest