Surely it’s a sign that a band is doing extremely well if their publicist asks you to wait two weeks to post about their new album because pre-orders through the band’s webstore have come in in overwhelming numbers. It’s hard to believe that an independent band like Cormorant could be in that position all on their own, but then again, no, it’s not really that hard to believe; Cormorant are a great band, people love ‘em, and as you may remember from his all-too-brief stint as a MetalSucks columnist a couple of years back, Cormorant mastermind Arthur von Nagel knows his way around the business side of music.

Now that we’ve waited the requisite two weeks, we can share the news that Dwellings is once again available for pre-order — this time through Cormorant’s Bandcamp page – in a number of configurations that mix and match the CD, a digital download, a t-shirt and a hoodie. All pre-orders come with an instant-grat download of three tracks, two of which have been previously available and a brand new one called “The First Man.” So get on that!

If you’re the “try before you buy” type head over to NPR, where Lars Gotrich has got the album he’s dubbed “the best metal record of 2011″ streaming in full. Look at the Alice Duke-drawn album artwork above as you listen, and consider if you think it’s worth springing for a CD version of Dwellings just so you can hold and admire that beauteous, sprawling masterpiece. Dwellings officially comes out on December 7th.

-VN

Amidst the frenzy into which the metal blogosphere has erupted over the forthcoming new Cormorant album, it’s easy to forget that this band is still unsigned. Perhaps intentionally so. As you may remember, band mastermind Arthur von Nagel penned a series of columns for MetalSucks about self-releasing, how to conduct your band’s business, and the music industry in general. I’m surprised that Relapse, Prosthetic, Profound Lore or some other label hasn’t swooped in and picked up Cormorant by now… or maybe they’ve attempted to, and Cormorant just aren’t interested.

In any case, Cormorant are doing just fine on their own; “Junta,” the first song to be released from their new album Dwellings (mind-blowing cover artwork here), is now streaming over at NPR. It’s a 9-minute epic about the violent opposition to the 2009 pro-democracy rallies in Guinea, and it has all the musical touchstones you’d expect from Cormorant following their last album Metazoa, upped to the next level; post- and black metal in a progressive framework that’s spacey, expansive, and hypnotizing. Stream it here, and stay for the interview with von Nagel.

Dwellings comes out on December 6th and can now be pre-ordered directly from Cormorant.

-VN

Pretty much the only good thing to ever come out of having Zilty express his barely-post-adolescent insecurity in our comments section was the discovery of Cormorant; longtime readers will remember that Cormorant bassist/vocalist Arthur von Nagel even ended up doing some guest blogging for us for, like, ten seconds. (You can read his three columns here.)

So I’m happy to tell you that Cormorant have completed work on a new album, Dwellings, and that that album is now scheduled to come out “mid-fall.” Vague and not entirely helpful information, but, hey, it’s a start!

And, unfortunately, that’s really all we know right now. But there is the below, not-terrific-quality video of the band performing the instrumental title track in San Francisco last summer, so that’s nice. Music sounds pretty cool, at least — not that that fact is a huge shock or anything.

And hopefully we’ll have more info soon.

-AR

FEATURING MEMBERS OF INTRONAUT, DARKEST HOUR, THE RED CHORD, KYLESA, GORGOROTH, CORMORANT, RETURN TO EARTH, KRIEG, LAZARUS A.D., HAIL OF BULLETS, AND BLOODHORSE

For 2010, we decided to do something special as part of our regular end-of-year festivities here at MetalSucks — namely, ask musicians from across the vast spectrum of the metalsphere (or, in a few cases, the almost-metalsphere) what their favorite albums of the year were. Death metallers, thrash metallers, black metallers, stoners, grinders, and djenters alike graciously contributed lists to MS, and we’ll be running them in groups of ten to eleven musicians at a time twice a day for the rest of the week.

After the jump, check out the fifth group… we hope you enjoy seeing what some of metal’s heaviest hitters were into this year as much as we have!

(And please note that these are musicians and that they, um, have a lot on their minds. So some of ‘em named albums that actually came out last year. Please don’t freak out.)

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Everyone knows that a band’s first album is always their best and everything thereafter sucks. It is not possible for a band to get better with time, especially if they’ve signed with a record label. Just ask Ziltoid, everyone’s favorite Interhole metal troll.

Ziltoid was all over the nuts of Cormorant just last year and first brought them to our attention when he interviewed Arthur Von Nagel on the day he took over MS. Now, I’m not spiteful (ok sometimes) and I’ll give credit where it’s due; Cormorant are a good band, and Ziltoid definitely made us aware of them. Metazoa was a rockin’ album, fer sure, and I’m quite impressed that it was completely self-funded and entirely DIY.

So now it’s a whole year and three months later — which in Troll Time is like an eternity — and Cormorant have announced that they’ll be entering the studio in early 2011 to record a new album.

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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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Well, at least one good thing came out of that day we let Ziltoid run the site: we ended up exchanging e-mails with Cormorant vocalist/bassist Arthur von Nagel (read Zilty’s excellent interview with Arthur here), who, we’re very pleased to announce, will begin writing a new column for MetalSucks, “Tiberian Vocalizations,” later this week.

To celebrate our blissful new union, we’re streaming Cormorant’s awesome new album, Metazoa, right here for the next two days. Produced by the legendary Billy Anderson (Neurosis, Brutal Truth, High on Fire, Mr. Bungle, etc.), Metazoa integrates elements of prog metal, death metal, black metal and folk metal into one truly unique, totally kick-ass package. Metazoa is Epic with a capital “E” – trust us when we say that you NEED to check out this record. And don’t forget to have a look at the lyrics – like Pig Destroyer and Primordial, they are a large part of the band’s sound and aesthetic and are very much worth your attention.

Metazoa comes out tomorrow via Saturnine Media. You can (and should!) order a copy through Cormorant’s official webstore. And don’t forget to check out Cormorant on MySpace for all the latest news and updates on the band!

Enjoy the album…

[this promotion has ended]

Once the polls indicated that I was practically guaranteed to win this little contest, I decided that one thing that I really wanted for this site was an interview. But I didn’t want an ordinary interview—I wanted a killer interview. Luckily, bassist/vocalist Arthur von Nagel of the band Cormorant was more than happy to provide this interview. In fact, Arthur went way beyond anything I expected!

For starters, Cormorant is a band that is very hard to categorize. Some might be very general and say “extreme progressive metal,” while others might just be up to the task of labeling them using every subgenre that Cormorant integrates into their music (an arduous task if I do say so myself). Regardless, these guys bring an incredibly unique and diverse sound into the metal scene. Based on what I’ve heard so far, their new album Metazoa is definitely looking like it’ll be one of my top albums of the year.

Besides being a great bassist, Arthur is just a genuinely classy guy and quite the intellectual as you’ll see in the interview after the jump.

Read the interview after the jump.

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