There’s a strain of music that I’ve always had a problem with, which is any music that can be referred to as “too European”. Do you know what I’m talking about? To me, it’s music that’s so immaculate, so devoid of punkiness and skronk, that you can actually see it shine like a waxed Porsche. That, initially, was what made me keep listening to Opeth and Cormorant on hold. Aside from the striking resemblance between Cormorant frontman Arthur Von Nagel and Opeth’s Mikael Åkerfeldt, both bands traffic in a mightily ambitious admixture of NWOBHM, prog, folk, and classic rock, with Cormorant trading Opeth’s death metal leanings for black metal ones.
The album that changed my mind about Opeth was Deliverance, and the album that changed my mind about Cormorant is Dwellings, a real statement of arrival from a shockingly young Bay Area band. First things first, you’ve never heard a production this immense and polished from any underground band, ever. Seriously, this is a gorgeous-sounding record; loud, but with some blessed room to breath dynamically.
It’s also the best example of a metal band incorporating topical and relevant lyrics since Ludicra’s The Tenant. Every thrash band I loved growing up had me looking at my watch when they tried to get TOPICAL. Cormorant, God bless ’em, manages to choke me up a few times on “Junta”. I won’t get into the subject here but there’s a great NPR piece that delves into the matter further.
So yeah, this record is not post-punky, sonically awkward, or warts-n-all in any way. It’s spit-shined, polished within an inch of its life, and stacked to the hinters with detail. It’s also honest, heavy, complex, and beautiful. I can’t remember the last time I was this impressed with a contemporary metal record this much. Oh wait, I can: it was Ludicra’s aforementioned swan song. Kudos to Cormorant for taking that spot in my heart.
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HEAR DWELLINGS
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Cormorant – “Confusion of Tongues”
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Cormorant – “A Howling Dust”
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BUY DWELLINGS
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Great review! Cormorant is a great band.
I’ll have to check this album out. Also, your link to the NPR piece is broken.
Wow, Alee. The comparison with Ludicra really jives with me, since this is my favorite record of 2011 and The Tenant was my favorite record of 2010.
Both from San Fransisco. Hmmm…
And both albums were produced (recorded) by the venerable Justin Weis @ Trakworx (as was “17th Street” by Hammers of Misfortune.)
Can’t wait to finally check this album out. Everything I’ve heard about it means I should love it. And that cover is sick.
Hadn’t heard of these guys until this record starting showing up on year-end lists. I hope it’s a “grower” because I can’t tell what all the fuss is about. My knee-jerk complaint being that it tries to jam too much stuff onto the same record (I’m not a fan of cranberry sauce getting into my mashed potatoes on thanksgiving, though gravy on veggies is usually tasty, right.); it demonstrates a notable versatility, but it doesn’t speak as highly of their songcrafting abilities. But yeah, needs another couple listens.
I also don’t like Pelican or An Albatross, so maybe I’m just not into bands with seabird names. are there any bands called Osprey or Petrel or Atlantic Tern?
Peregrine
nah, Peregrine Falcons aren’t seabirds, they can live almost anywhere.
The song “Junta” is great. Still i think Cormorant need to find their own style.
Thanks so much for the great review, Alee. The credit for the ace production job goes to Justin Weis at Trakworx studios, whose work was honored twice by Invisible Oranges last year (http://www.invisibleoranges.com/2010/12/the-best-metal-album-production-of-2010/).
Since a couple people have mentioned it, I’ve heard our quirky genre-less songwriting “clicks” for a lot folks when they listen to the music while following along with the lyrics. The two aspects are designed to work together in concert in a way that’s not common in metal. We’re certainly not for everyone though, and that’s totally cool with us. We’re just happy people are giving our music a listen!
Actually, all the links are broken.
Anyway, I wasn’t planning to check this out. It’s not the kind of thing I usually look into that much–in other words, it’s the kind of thing hyped by MetalSucks (which usually means it probably DOES suck). The album art kind of pisses me off, too. I mean, I don’t mind a huge piece of album art, and the traditional shape is I suppose a thing of the past in the digital age, but that border on three sides when it’s cut down to normal size is really disconcerting. If you’re going to go with sprawling, make sure there is an album art-size piece that looks like a cohesive whole.
However, this review has convinced me to check it out.
You sure do have a lot of self-imposed barriers to enjoying music!
They’re not barriers to enjoying music. They are the filtering mechanisms I use to decide what I will and will not spend my time/money on, since I can’t very well listen to everything. Once I put it on, none of this will matter. They’re threshold issues.
I’m all kinds of fucked up, I loved Metazoa but haven’t clicked with Dwellings. Perhaps another listen then . . .
They are an excellent band, but I always find them just a little TOO close to Opeth for me, and I guess if I want to listen to Opeth, that is who i’ll listen to. Lots of potential, but they need to get a little more original for me to say they live up to the hype. That said, being very similar sounding to Opeth is probably pretty heavy praise so take this how you want!!!
I like the record and realize I will have to listen to it quite a bit more in 2012. I think the final vision of Ludicra is even closer than the Opeth comparisons, which had not come to mind during the first couple of spins, when it comes to making rough comparisons.
My problem right now is…and this probably doesn’t make any sense…is that I love Agalloch, Hammers of Misfortune, Ludicra and Justin Weis’s production aesthetic almost too much these days. I’m somewhat guarded right now, thinking that “Dwellings” is too much of a good thing, if that’s possible.
Between that and all the year-end praise, I don’t trust my own music fan instincts. I realize I’m over-thinking it. And I know as the dust from the new year settles, I’ll really start to give it the attention it deserves. Maybe tonight?
Chris Dalton = my new best friend!
All the links are fixed! Sorry about that.
@Alex C
Have you tried their previous record, Metazoa? There is slightly less cranberries, and they are served on a little lettuce leaf to alleviate some of the juice intermingling.
I believe Dwellings is indeed a grower, I spent a lot of time with it before I felt like I “got” it; on the other hand, Metazoa really grabbed me immediately. It could be debated which (if either!) is superior in the long run, as each has its merits… but at least to this reviewer, Metazoa made more of an impression when based solely on that very first listen.
no, I only got this one a couple days ago and had a couple listens. since I don’t like Opeth and Agalloch, it makes sense [in hindsight] that I wouldn’t be so into this. there are parts that I definitely enjoy, but as good as any individual passages are, they don’t integrate with one another.
a major test for me the past few months, though, has been if my interest gets piqued when a song comes up on random (on itunes/ipod). that’s how I finally got into the new Tombs, so we’ll see if that happens with this.
@Full Metal Attorney
The full-sized album art is not irregularly shaped in an attempt to eschew traditional album constraints in a digital format, nor is the smaller version just lazily cropped into a more standard size.
The full vertical image is actually a three-panel design that folds out, on the physical CD cover, whereas the representation seen above is the single “cover” panel that is visible when it is folded closed. So, in fact, I’d say it’s more of a celebration of the physical album format that might not be translating as readily into the digital world, rather than the other way…
I think it’s the border that makes it so weird for me, since it’s only got a border on three sides.
Well said! I had a suspicion that this was the case.
How can you complain about a little awkward border cropping when the uncut image is FVKKYNG EPYK!!! http://www.mindovermetal.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Cormorant-Dwellings-artwork-FINAL.jpg
Awesome. Maybe cropping the border out completely for the thumbnail version would be a wise aesthetic choice. Either way, awesome cover art, and digging the tunes so far.
-wc
That’s absolutely correct. The border is truncated because the piece was designed specifically for three vertical panels, and not a standard square CD front. There’s a version floating around with a border undercutting the bottom of the top panel, but it’s not accurate to the original intent. The complete piece depicts scenes from the album’s lyrics, and there’s a thread connecting the different sections together. Just the top panel doesn’t tell the full story. We’re really trying to do justice to the physical format rather than digital. We’re old-school that way: the album’s instrumentation was also recorded live to analog tape.
At the top of this photo you can see the physical digipak unwrapped so you get an idea of what we’re doing:
http://a1.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/376012_316046188405873_100000014844778_1352435_1899778745_n.jpg
Additional photos of the physical format on our Bandcamp:
http://cormorant.bandcamp.com/
Although I’m totally with you, I don’t think that “false perfectionism”, as I would like to call it, is a particular european thing in music.
Having said that, during the last years I indeed felt like observing quite a gap between the kind of “Mainstream Metal”, that’s been released through the bigger labels of european origin, and the well ringing names of “Amercian Underground Metal”, so to speak. The former often resulting in glossy “Loudnness War” crap productions and stuff that’s stylistically secure and confident by numbers, the latter often coming with quite more adventurous spirit, not being afraid of rock’n'rolly imperfection.
This could actually be an interesting topic to be examined in detail.
“devoid of punkiness and skronk”
You might say that music from Europe, or along “European” lines, has more of an artistic past to draw on, so it is more interested in having classical aspirations than punk ones.
“More” than what? The Europeans didn’t invent music and they’re not the only ones with a musical tradition or a classical musical tradition, for that matter.
I mean my statement is fraught with presumptions too but I was trying to say that there’s a kind of sanitary quality that I sense in European music. No microtones or aberrations. Even the idea of aberrations or weird harmonies is very subjective. Our dissonance is someone else’s love song.
Those are some really nice leads on “Confusion of Tongues.” Very excited to give the whole thing a listen, and not as an mp3 through my crappy laptop speakers.
Is it available yet on LP? Hearing _17th Street_ that way was a revelation for me. The songs on that were interesting enough streaming online, but the 2XLP sounds as good as anything I’ve bought in a long time.
@pseudonymous: Yes, there is a 2xLP edition of Dwellings slated for a Spring 2012 release.
Thanks! And congrats on the accolades. Based on what little I’ve heard, this is interesting stuff. I’ll hold out for the 2XLP, which I imagine is the format most likely to do justice to the artwork and the production.
I don’t really get this whole American/European distinction thing that I see here sometimes. Of course there are differences between the two continental ’scenes’ but there are as many melodic and technically leaning bands with a taste for tackiness from the US as there are from Europe and there are a shitton of punky and ‘masculine’ (as apposed to the immasculate “too European” bands you describe) groups from Europe as there are from the states. I think this ‘punkiness’ (which is not without its cliches and cheese anyway) is something largely extant in the metal underground and that’s the case in regards to both continents. Maybe I’m nitpicking.
Of the many words I could use to describe this album and its production, “polished” would not have been one of them. Polished production, to me, usually brings to mind more clean, digital-sounding stuff like a lot of djent and whatnot, and Dwellings is nothing like that.
Tracked to 2″ tape, hit 1/2′ tape in mastering. Polished but not polished
By way of an addendum to this review, I’d like to say it’s firmly in the “grower” category although for some it was a “show-er”. It’s important to marinate with the occasional record for it to reveal its true flavor.
Hey thanks all for the kind words regarding the production. ‘Really enjoyed working with this great and dedicated band! ‘Loving the comparisons to “The Tenant” as that was one of my favorite projects from the previous year.
J~
This album is so goddamn amazing I don’t really have the words….some of the most creative topics in metal lyrics in a long, long time, great writing and superb execution. Maybe for some the mixture of different styles, song lengths and what not get too overbearing. For me, this is just, I don’t want to say perfect as nothing really is, but Dwellings gets pretty damn close.
Thanks again for the heads-up IO. Can’t wait for the LP.
Cormorant why you no offer Dwellings on vinyl yet?!
Dwellings on 2xLP vinyl is due in the spring.
Great news on the vinyl.. Any idea where we can pre order from the UK
We’re aiming for an early spring release.
Oh sorry, I already mentioned that, haha. I don’t know the details of international pre-orders, but I believe it will be the same as the North American.