Band:	Cormorant
Album:	Diaspora
Style:	Melodic death metal, Progressive metal
Release date:	August 11, 2017
A review by:	RaduP

01. Preserved In Ash
02. Sentinel
03. The Devourer
04. Migration

Progressive music may get a bad rep when it is so obvious that the musicians are either shamelessly emulating the sounds of past bands or are trying way too hard to write overly complex music, but when done right, the sounds of different influences can fit perfectly together, like ingredients in a sandwich (a comparison that was never ever done on this website). Enter Cormorant.

Diaspora is Cormorant's second album since the departure of former vocalist, bassist and songwriter Arthur von Nagel and the addition of Marcus Luscombe. With the high standards set by the first two albums, their 2014 offering, Earth Diver, has left a few fans a bit doubtful, something which may change with this release.

The tracklisting on this monolith does make it a bit less of an accessible listen, seeing how despite having but four tracks it is spread over an hour with "Migration" reaching a whooping 26 minutes. Obviously, this should be a red flag that this would be either a snoozefest or an act of extreme pretentiousness. Thankfully Cormorant have their heads way outside their own asses and they manage to write such a dynamic and varied album, that no minute feels wasted and recycled.

The progressiveness of the music is, while obviously technical at points, much more focused on writing riffs and varied structures than technical wankery. Cormorant does bring obvious influences from black metal, death metal, doom metal, folk and 70s progressive rock and absolutely succeed at putting all of these sounds into place in such a way that the final result feels coherent and not like a disjointed mess. With sections that compliment each other so well, Diaspora never really runs out of steam.

Cormorant are quite an odd metal band, in the sense that they manage to make an album that sounds so great at this point in their career without any label intervention. Indeed, sound-wise but not only, this album is on-par with the highs of the highs.

Thus, Diaspora is a wild ride of twists and turns from bold riffs to snarling vocals to mellow solos, from fierce to epic to moody, it is extreme prog as extreme prog should be.