Cobalt

Cobalt, the American black metal band from Greeley, Colorado, took shape in 2002 when vocalist and guitarist Phil McSorley joined forces with multi-instrumentalist Erik Wunder, who handled guitar, bass, and drums. This partnership ended McSorley’s previous endeavor under the name Grimness Enshroud, which had yielded only a single demo. The newly formed duo channeled their mutual attraction to aggressive sounds into the 2003 EP Hammerfight and the 2005 album War Metal, both of which displayed notable assurance and potential. Their profile rose with the 2007 release Eater of Birds, a long-player widely praised by critics and listeners alike as a cult favorite. Operating exclusively as a studio project without live shows, Cobalt distinguished its sound through unexpected intellectual references that extended from Nietzsche to Hunter S. Thompson. By this point the band had signed with Profound Lore, issuing the 2008 EP Landfill Breastmilk Beast before activity halted when McSorley, an infantryman in the U.S. Army, deployed to Iraq. After returning, he drew on those direct experiences—described as “battle metal”—to shape the lyrics for the third album, Gin, which marked the group’s commercial breakthrough and earned numerous Album of the Year nominations from leading heavy metal publications. Over the next two years, friction grew between Wunder and McSorley, who formally exited the project in late 2014. Wunder then brought in former Lord Mantis vocalist Charlie Fell to complete the fourth studio album, Slow Forever, issued in early 2016.