THE BLINDING DARK
AN INTERVIEW WITHย JOAKIM MONTELIUS OF COVENANT
Covenantโs ninth album, The Blinding Dark, which came out on November 4, follows the bandโs original guiding principle that change must be their only constant.
Released on Metropolis in North America (and the Dependent label in Europe), the 11-track album is, of course, heavily influenced by electronic sounds while relying on tempo variances and meaningful lyrics. Diverting from the Covenant tracks that introduced me personally (and, I suspect, many others) to the band, such as โWe Stand Aloneโ, โCall the Ships to Portโ, โDead Starsโ, โHappy Manโ, etc., a number of the pieces stay with a dancey EBM feel but retain an overriding darkness, such as โIf I Give You My Soul,โ which seemed to be a rather hopeless view of a relationship.
The album was completed mainly by the two core members, Eskil Simonsson (responsible for synths, vocals, programming and production) and Joakim Montelius (taking over duties pertaining to execution, lyrics and engineering), but a couple of the tracks were written by Daniel Meyer and Andreas Catjar (Meyer, of Haujobb, is listed as a former member and Catjar is a touring member), so, according to Montelius, โitโs a band operation.โ Overall, I appreciated the albumโs honesty, both lyrically and musically. โWhen you listen to this album, itโs important to read between the lines, thereโs a lot in the space between the obvious things that might take a while to get used to,โ said Montelius.
One song that resonates strongly isย โI Close My Eyes,โ which, according to Montelius, is a song they wrote about 10 years ago, but which never seemed to fit with any of their previous albums. โIf you listen to the lyrics, itโs about when you have no control of a situation or the world as it is, you go inward. Itโs about closing your eyes to see the world in a different way.โ Another superb track isย โCold Reading,โ which โis a way of expressing this frustration we feel โ you want to say something, you want to do something about this crap that is going on in the world but thereโs no way to do it,โ said Montelius.
โThe overall feeling of the album is a reaction to how the world is at the moment,โ according to Montelius. โJust over the past two or three years, the world is getting rapidly much more incomprehensible and scary.โ Track seven on the Europeanย version of the album (the track list is in a different order on the European release, according to a representative from the Metropolis label) is โDies Iraeโ, the name of which (and some inspiration lyrically, according to Montelius) was borrowed from a Latin hymn dating from at least the 13th century meaning โday of wrathโ (and, as a side-note, is also the title of the opening song in Stanley Kubrickโs movie โThe Shining,โ as was mentioned by Simmonsson in a YouTube video the band released). The song follows the formula of being dark and slow with a steady beat.
The 2-CD version (in addition to the upgraded box set option) includes the Psychonaut EP, which contains more than an hour of improvised and experimental music recorded directly to two channels. All tracks were improvised and performed live (without the aid of computers) by Montelius, Simonsson, Catjar, and Daniel Jonasson (touring member) at a private session in Osterlov forest on September 4th, 2015. โItโs something weโve wanted to do for a long time, actually,โ said Montelius. โItโs completely improvised, we didnโt use computers at all, itโs just old school, the way stuff was made in the โ70s โ itโs just a bunch of machines connected together and we just went for it for two days in a house in the woods.
We are computer people; we never play together, normally. So it was the first time the band played together like a real band. It was interesting, the setting was in the middle of a forest and the weather was terrible and we were really surprised how well it worked. More likeโฆif you imagine music in a stream-of-consciousness kind of way, so thatโs why we chose it for the bonus material, because it kind of completes the album, makes it more roundedโฆadds a little bit of that kind of spontaneous, almost spiritual feeling that you can get when music is kind of taking over.โ
Overall The Blinding Darkย is an excellent albumย (even the cover of โA Rider on a White Horse,โ a song borrowed from Lee Hazlewood โ despite the fact that I really do not care for the original Hazlewood version in the least!). Iโm hoping we can look forward to a minimum of nine more albums from the band!