bassist
A bassist (also known as a bass player or bass guitarist) is a musician who plays a Bass (instrument), bass instrument such as a double bass (upright bass, contrabass, wood bass), bass guitar (electric bass, acoustic bass), synthbass, keyboar ...
drummer
A drummer is a percussionist who creates music using drum
The drum is a member of the percussion group of musical instruments. In the Hornbostel-Sachs classification system, it is a membranophone. Drums consist of at least one mem ...
Brennan Kunkel.
Since its inception, the band has remained intentionally and notably independent.
It has eluded a specific genre label by incorporating elements of many different styles of music. While somewhat rooted in
black metal
Black metal is an extreme metal, extreme subgenre of heavy metal music. Common traits include Tempo#Beats per minute, fast tempos, a Screaming (music)#Black metal, shrieking vocal style, heavily distorted Electric guitar, guitars played with t ...
, the group has been known to incorporate
blues
Blues is a music genre and musical form which originated in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads from the Afr ...
death metal
Death metal is an extreme subgenre of heavy metal music. It typically employs heavily distorted and low-tuned guitars, played with techniques such as palm muting and tremolo picking; deep growling vocals; aggressive, powerful drumming, feat ...
and folk elements to its music, among others.
The band has released four
studio album
An album is a collection of audio recordings issued on compact disc (CD), Phonograph record, vinyl, audio tape, or another medium such as Digital distribution#Music, digital distribution. Albums of recorded sound were developed in the early ...
s and one extended play. The band released its debut EP ''The Last Tree'' in 2007, and released the studio albums, '' Metazoa in September 2009,'' ''
Dwellings
In law, a dwelling (also known as a residence or an abode) is a self-contained unit of accommodation used by one or more households as a home - such as a house, apartment, mobile home, houseboat, vehicle, or other "substantial" structure. The ...
'' in December 2011 and ''Earth Diver'' in April 2014. Their newest album, ''
Diaspora
A diaspora ( ) is a population that is scattered across regions which are separate from its geographic place of origin. Historically, the word was used first in reference to the dispersion of Greeks in the Hellenic world, and later Jews after ...
'', was released in August 2017.
History
Formation and ''The Last Tree'' (2007)
As described by von Nagel in an interview with the metal website Heavy Blog Is Heavy, the beginnings of the band can be traced to Kunkel and bassist von Nagel meeting while playing in a thrash metal band together in their late teens. After becoming subsequently bored with the limitations of the project, the two proceeded to make attempts at creating and demoing progressive black metal songs with Kunkel on guitar. These demos would form the earliest Cormorant content.
Soon after the duo's first ventures, they proceeded to invite Brennan's friend Nick Cohon from their high school thrash/groove band, Kubla Khan, to the line up. Together, the trio recorded and released ''The Last Tree'' EP.
Shortly after its release, the band met Solis at an Enslaved show and recruited him as second guitarist. The complete lineup would then dive straight into the writing and recording of the band's debut album, '' Metazoa''.
''Metazoa'' (2009)
''Metazoa'' was released on September 22, 2009, to critical praise for its varied and unique sound. With the Billy Anderson-produced album's success propagated by various metal websites and blogs, the band's independently created debut stood as a DIY and underground success. The album's success had the band featured in an exclusive feature on the website Ultimate Guitar Archive, focusing on the band's DIY success.
''Dwellings'' (2011)
''Dwellings'' was released on December 6, 2011, to further critical praise from both critics and fans alike.
Despite ''Metazoas success, it did not receive as much publicity or widespread acclaim as ''Dwellings'' did.
Sites including
NPR Music
NPR Music is a project of National Public Radio, an American privately and publicly funded non-profit membership media organization, that launched in November 2007 to present public radio music programming and original editorial content for music ...
, Yahoo! Music and about.com all listed ''Dwellings'' in their end of year favorites list, with NPR Music including it as the number-one metal album of 2011. "Dwellings is, far and away, the best metal record of 2011: an emotionally and musically complex album which wrestles with our desperate and sometimes violent attempts to secure a place in history.", said NPR Music's Lars Gotrich.
Influences
As revealed in various interviews, the band has been known to draw from various different genres, both within and outside of metal. Each of the band's members is known to have very diverse and far-reaching musical tastes that lend themselves in different ways to the band's music.
Kunkel is known to enjoy creating hip-hop beats in his free time, whereas Cohon's previous musical endeavor was an old time fiddle band project as well as a blues band.
Von Nagel references growing up on French folk and classical music before briefly experimenting with many genres such as pop and rock before finding a passion for metal.
Lyrics
Von Nagel is known to put significant effort into the band's lyrics, which have been a great source of praise for the band's music, cited as poignant and poetic by critics.
Critic Alee Karim described the lyrics on ''Dwellings'' as "...the best example of a metal band incorporating topical and relevant lyrics since
Ludicra
Ludicra is an American heavy metal band from San Francisco. They originally formed in 1998 as a quartet and later expanded to five members. In 2011, the band announced on their official website that they had disbanded,
While the band's debut album, ''Metazoa'', focused mostly on themes of nature and the equilibrium of life and death, the topics therein have been varied, ranging the death of 18th century French politician Maximilien de Robespierre on "Uneasy Lies the Head" to a metaphysically explorative descent from heaven to hell on "Hanging Gardens".
''Dwellings'' featured an overarching theme concerning the human spirit and the trials of humanity in pursuit of immortality throughout history. Though a thematic departure from the themes of nature in previous works, von Nagel's poetic and narrative style is consistent throughout the band's work.
DIY approach
The band has released all of its records independently, despite reportedly being made offers by various record labels.
This DIY approach has become somewhat of a band trademark, especially concerning the marketing done for ''Dwellings''. As part of a pre-order deal made directly with the band, early adopters could choose from a variety of special collector editions of the album, complete with merchandise. These pre-orders sold out quickly, and allowed the band to fund part of the album's recording costs.
The band's DIY success and retention of production quality have made it a common reference to the changing state of the music industry in the metal underground.
Much of the band's independent success can be attributed to its marked Internet presence and use of services such as Bandcamp, which von Nagel has noted as "glorious".
List of bands from the San Francisco Bay Area
This is a list of bands from the San Francisco Bay Area, music groups founded in the San Francisco Bay Area or closely associated with the region. Individual musicians who formed bands under their own name there are included, but not if they are ...