Covenant
In Times Before The Light

THE REVIEW

If "The Kovenant" had remained the "Covenant" from their beginnings, who knows what they would be today?

Of course, Nagash and Blackheart's band have seen many changes since 1997, when they released this "In Time Before the Light"; moving from Black Metal that couldn’t be called "True Norwegian" simply because it harbored the unhealthy seeds of symphonism that later brought much success to others (Dimmu Borgir, not coincidentally. Cradle of Filth, Emperor, etc. etc.), they have arrived at an Industrial style that is contaminated and contaminating, enjoyable to listen to, fast, powerful, rocky, and sophisticated, but which has nothing to do with the songs that make up the work I am writing about.

This album is a lash of Black Metal. Symphonic yes, but always and only Black Metal, as many would like to remember it: raw, nocturnal, icy, fast, and wicked. In this, the "Covenant" had nothing to envy from anyone, and if you have the luck to find the first press of the CD and not the one overflowing with effects dated 2002, then you can realize it: gloomy, sulfurous chords, gritty, violent, and without any glimpse of light.
Tracks like "Towards the Crown of Nights", "From the Storm of Shadows", "Dragon Storm", are clear examples to elucidate what I am talking about. Classic style outbursts, without frills and without any mercy for the auricular lobes, without demanding originality of sounds or contents, yet fascinating, where, besides the annihilating carpet of fury and speed, combined with a good dose of estrangement typical of this band genre, one is accompanied by keyboard interludes and guitars that, rather than to the fundamentals of the songs, stand on their surface, enriching them with pathos and reverb.

But there is also time to decelerate and indulge in the luxury of bringing compositions to a strange level, entirely made of atmosphere and frigidity, but with more than a wink to the fact that it is still music we are talking about, which in its scabrous and sparse impact materiality, brings back to sick and certainly sad concepts to which the Covenant draw with full hands. The most fitting example in this sense is represented by "Night of the Blackwinds", or "Visions of Lost Kingdom", or the last "Monarch of the Mighty Darkness", inspired to the nth power and that seems like the continuation of the second mentioned, yet without carrying forward the same things tediously: there is absolutely nothing boring here. Quite the opposite.

And so, we return to the earlier question: What would The Kovenant be if they had remained as represented in this record? It is certain that they would never have composed chart songs like "New World Order" or "Jihad"; nor would they ever have given birth to albums like "Nexus Polaris" or "S.E.T.I.", but in the end, if it hadn't been this way, would there really have been a need for it? Really?

So, to close the circle, I certainly recommend listening to this album, which certainly does not shine for originality but which at the time it was published indeed contributed, in its small way, to embroider the extremist and furious aura of Black Metal, even wanting it freed from the acid and unremitting accelerations without pause of other bands, which alone constituted the fundamental fabric of a music that already at this stage managed to be very expressive. Imagine then with the great dose of symphonism the Covenant surrounded themselves with.