Black metal, in spite of its more purist fans, has undergone so many stylistic permutations since the Norwegian second wave’s arson-fueled media explosion that I’m hard-pressed to even define what black metal sounds like circa 2009. By frankensteining elements of Mayhem, Bathory, Burzum, Darkthrone, Celtic Frost, Emperor, Venom, Enslaved, Ulver and countless other classics with every unrelated style under the wintermoon, bands to follow spawned sub-sub-genres for all tastes: folk-black/Viking metal, symphonic black metal, war metal, suicidal black metal, atmospheric/ambient black metal, blackened post-rock, progressive black metal, black-thrash, blackened death metal, industrial black metal, national social black metal, black/doom, blackened crust, black n’ roll… and a peculiar little anti-style often referred to half-ironically as “post-black metal.”

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So I was working on the proper follow-up to my article “Anatomy of a Record Contract,” which, for all you aspiring bands out there, will be an in-depth guide to self-releasing a metal album.  I was finishing up a section listing effective methods for shipping merchandise, and I wrote a sentence that made me pause and realize how incredibly fortunate I am:

“To aid with packaging orders, your own family is potentially a valuable resource.”

Now family is a delicate subject for some, as it is for me on my father’s side.  But overall in Cormorant, we’ve all been blessed with family members supportive of our music.  While we were holed up for two weeks recording Metazoa, Matt Solis’s father visited us brandishing a mighty cauldron of chicken mole, and his brother Andrew contributed the album’s awesome keyboard tracks.  We’re very grateful for the horrible racket Brennan Kunkel’s poor grandparents were kind enough to endure when we practiced in their living room or garage, and all the beautiful operatic female vocal work on our albums comes courtesy of his sister Deborah Spake.  Nick Cohon’s dad actually tracked the rain stick parts on our song “Ballad of Beast” and did a hell of job of it.  On my end, my aunt Deborah Tibbetts contributed her significant graphic design skills to fashion the look of our EP The Last Tree, and my grandmother, despite being in her 70s (but still spry), comes to rock out at most of our shows.  My girlfriend Amber’s parents Alison and Greg Nelson and brother Ben have backed us for years, and her father not only helped us construct the sound-proof practice studio where we composed Metazoa, but he actually built the bass and one of the primary guitars you hear on the album.

And then there’s my mom.

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Please join us in welcoming our latest musician columnist, Cormorant’s Arthur von Nagel. He’ll be writing for us from time to time and we’re happy to have him on board! Enjoy his inaugural column… and don’t forget that you can stream Cormorant’s new album, Metazoa, right here.

When I was sixteen and stupid (and weren’t we all?), I had this silly idea that when you form a band, the ultimate goal was to get signed.  Once you’re signed, you’ve made it.  Cascades of money gush from the pockets of your fans, you score the covers of Time, Atlantic Monthly, Rolling Stone and Home & Garden, you’re given the master key to the Playboy mansion, and, of course, you get to quit your day job.  Now, not to say this isn’t all 100% true, but since then I’ve been able to witness this mythical beast known as a “record contract,” and she’s quite a bit hairier than I once thought.

She looks like this, minus the unfortunate puritan censorship of her naughty bits [Editor's note: you can click on any of the below images to enlarge them.]:

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