The first sounds I had heard from Covenant was their Nexus Polaris album. It didn't really get me interested in the band since they weren't playing the kind of black metal I like. Time passed and the next time I met their name was in 1999 when they released Animatronic under a slightly changed name The Kovenant. That was something more interesting. They electronized their music but not in the usual industrial way but they rather took a more popular direction. As a result they got a bigger attention and with Zeromancer they did a successful tour in the same year.
Till the early summer of 2002 it got really quiet around the band. Some were afraid they broke up in silence while others just waited patiently. The big news came almost a year ago, The Kovenant was working on a new album. Months have passed. We could take a look into their studio work with the help of live webcams, from time to time they kept us informed on what was going on behind the scene. In March 2003 the wait has ended. Their new album, titled S.E.T.I. has been released and we ended speculating. Now everybody could make a decision if S.E.T.I. is what we had been waiting for or is it something unexpected. We all can hear the changes and now it's only up to us if we like it or not. In the case of such a controversial release, I'm sure everybody have lots of questions to ask from the band so I tried to interrogate Psy Coma about as many things I could come up in February.
The first thing that kept everybody wonder was what might the band have been doing in the 4 years that passed between S.E.T.I. and their previous release Animatronic. "We did pretty much actually. We did a whole year of touring in 2000, European tour, American tour, festivals, Norwegain tour so that was quite a busy year for us. In 2001 we mainly focused on writing new material. We spent a lot of time finding the right new direction to go with and last year we entirely spent with recording of the album. We were in the studio from May till October. We did demo tapes, well acutally demo cds these days and during that time we made a reinterpretated version of our debut album too. Hopefuly we will be able to accelerate things a little bit in the future so we don't have to spend 4 years between every record. It's a long time for us too but it's not like we've been doing nothing. We really haven't payed that so much attention to the time passing it's just suddenly four years have gone. "
Psy Coma himself mentioned the re-release of their first album, In Times Before the Light so I asked him about the why's behind this step. New listeners of a band are always happy to get fresh sounding version of an older record, mostly with bonus stuff while old fans might feel deceived for paying again for almost the same material. But The Kovenant managed to do it differently, not to upset anybody. "Basically we insisted to keep it alive. We had the option to re-release, to re-issue the album again because it was not being pressed anymore. We decided to do that on Hammerheart but the main problem was that the record was done by old obsolete record equipment so unfortunately we had lost some of the original material, particulary the keyboard tracks were all corrupted. So we decided to do the record again, the keep it available instead of keeping it like a mysterious old piece of work. We are kind of ppl who start to do something we are not really able to stop until we shake everything upside down. It became quiet experimental, sort of a freaking out project. It's not really meant to be a replacement of the first version, it's rather a new version, its the 2002 version. It also has a new cover. We were never really happy with the original artwork. We just wanted a cover that explain the experimental, that multiply the diverse direction we have done with it. It's a very energetic, strange new version and we needed a new album cover to that." And he kept talking a bit about the re-making of it: "It was done in my own studio. I spent a few months with it, the beginning of last year. But i was done in corporation with the new record. We were working in parallel on the old record and as well we were working on the demos for the new records. We can say from January till May we were doing the new version and also the new demos."
Since we got a clear explanation for the existence of the new version of their debute album, the question pops up obviously if they have thought about making a new version of Nexus Polaris, their other record that is still close to their black metal roots. For those who would like to hear something like that, Psy Coma's answer will be disappointing: "With the first album we felt it was a little bit unaccomplished, those songs had more potential than we were able to do witht he first version. We thought we could do it in a different way. The Nexus Polaris album I feel is quite accomplished, we took it its the highest point we could and I don't feel that there is any room for doing much differently with it. Though I think we will do that because we are working on live things, and we are rearraning the older songs making them fit nicely together with the new stuff. It's like finding the middle way between the songs to make an insterseting live sound. So actually we are doing some modification with the old songs for a live set up. But nothing else is planned with them. "
At this point I felt it was time to talk about their new album, S.E.T.I. and about the changes I felt while I was litening to this album. Psy Coma approached this subject from a different point of view while we, listeners are mainly concentrate on the stlyle change and the fact that they are getting further from their black metal roots. "For us there is a big change in songwriting, we focused much clearly on song structures, song arrangements and complexity instead of just riffing and things like that. Guitars used to be a very dominant part of the band. They are still dominant in the music just not the most, the only important part of the music. They are just one part of the idea, it's more based on the idea of the song and the melodies. In one way we can say so or at least I would say we are getting closer to our own sound. It's going further from other things as well. I don't see the purpose on getting further from metal or from any other genres, I just feel we are getting closer to our own ideas." May we consider this as natural developement? In some extense it is, as Psy Coma states. "We are always conscious of what we do. We carefully think through what is the right way for us to move the the band, if it is the direction we want to move in. It's not all coincidental progression, because we have ideas what direction we want and what sound we want. So I guess, it's a mixture of both. But none of them include being more accessible or selling more records."
With his answer we arrived to marshland. What is more important, the expectations of the fans or their own, quite new ideas? Should they upset their fans, following their own insticts or should they produce the same material again and again? Will their fans like the new stuff or they rather would like to go for the well-known? "Maybe or maybe not, I'm not sure. I've got quiet diverse feedback on that. Some ppl expected something completely different from what we did and a lot of ppl expected a countinuation of the Animatronic sound, involved more electronica and more experimental things. It's always difficult to relate what ppl might expect. But that's ultimately not such a big concern for us either we know we can't confirm to other the ppl's ideas, we have to follow our own soul. We put these things aside when we write new material because there are so many expectations and different thoughts about things and we can't really follow those direction. It's a bit changelling for us to come up with something unexpected and hopefully something new. That's a part of the idea of the band, being musically challenging and not always conformning. We are not there for background music, we take your attention. The record is so fresh now, we haven't really analyzed it so much yet and at this point it's a bit difficult to self analyze. I'm sure we can analyze the positive and negative side of the record in a year or so. We had a pre-listening session in Germany in January with journalists. They were very positive about it. I know there are always diverse opinions and we seemed to be a band that are able to polarize opinions as well in a sense of there are a lot of ppl who hate us and there are a lot ppl who love us. That means we have effect on ppl. Which is good, because it's bettern than being ignored and unfulfilled in sense of what you doing. We have a talent for creating discussion and strong feelings toward our things and that's a positive thing. "
I think people will discuss their new image as well, not just the new direction of the music. The futuristic looking promo pictures made me curious who might have been their designer: "We have a sponsorship with a German clothing company that provides some stuff for us. Actually we wanted it because we are big fans of their stuff and we wanted to use it. The live shows are gonna be taken to quiet a new level. Additional to this kind of imagery will obviously completed with big stunning soundcapes and musically it will involve a whole new visional production as well. We are going to use video metarial in quiet an awful way, it will have a strong impact and I'm not sure ppl are gonna be able to witness it for 1,5 hours because it's a little intense. It's probably a little compareable to 'Clockwork Orange'. If you are not familiar with it, it's sort like a sublime, propaganda, brainwashing movie. It's like a fast moving rhythmical video that is totally rhytmically programmed in time with key elements in the music. Particulary things in the music goes along with particular images of a video rhytmically programmed and it all becomes kind of a suble intense package together. It looks a bit like if we are trying to brainwash our audience. But it's very interesting and it's gonna be a very intense package and I hope we can afford to bring this all over at least Europe because these kind of equipments that we need are a bit expensive and difficult to bring around. But it's all controlled in real time life from the stage together with the keyboards actually.- Actually we are also working on putting together a bugdet and the right ppl for a video, a low budget video for the track 'Star by Star'. It will be a sort of a presentation video of the band, whick keeps focus on the band members and the musical appearaence and on the song of course. So, it won't have a story line or anything else like that, it will be just a basic video to present the band to the viewing audience of the music tv channels .. hopefully."
The new album title S.E.T.I. is the abbreviation of 'Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence'. This title offers the sea of explanations for its meaning. You may like sci-fi stories, you might be interested in space research, or simple might be sarcastic on humanity. Before I could have read the lyrics and forming my version of the band's possible concept for S.E.T.I. I asked Psy Coma about it: "Obviously it gives you associations to sci-fi things but for us it's not about the direct meaning of the Search for extra terrestrial intelligence. It's more a metaphorical way of saying that we are kind of a searching, seeking, exploring band sometimes we feel that what we are doing musically is sort of like looking for little green men, it's rather get away from describing what we are doing. We are trying to be musical pioneers looking for new life forms in music and also with the ideas we have. That's our intetion, sounds a bit ambitous right now but that's at least the way we identify ourselves. It can have a lot of meaning but that was the initial significant it has for us and for the record. It's sort of an umbrella to put everything we do under it. We try to avoid being very direct because we don't feel we have any direct specific ideas we want to tell you or write down. We have ideas, subjects, feelings and atmospheres we want to express and we try to avoid being too direct in it because we are not a political group, we are just a band who wants to express our feelings and certain things but we don't have direct messages." And the lyrics " on a deeper level are about existential things, life and creation and religion.... etc. There are a little in the tradition of conspiracy theories I think. The concept is based on that everybody is conspiracing and there is a lot of hidden agenda. It`s kinda like a cyberpunk, a bit rebellious. But there are certainly a lot of futuristic technology things in the topics, some of the songs are about current state of men and technology, sort of like a border line between humanity and technology."
Men and technology. The proper turn to talk about the making of the album. When the first news got published last year we were told they composed the new material mostly on computers. That was the first sign of the new direction of their might have taken. We all know working on computers has a lot of advantages but doesn't it ruining the spirit of art? The Kovenant is really the metal child of the 21st century, they didn't leave anything to chance. Using computers for composing music is different comparing to the 'old-fashioned' way: "The main difference is that you are able to explore everything in a much bigger detail. We don't have to wait untill we go into the studio to hear how will we sound in the end. We could record things with the computer or in my home studio with my equipements. It gives you the possibility to work on your own ideas and sound and it also gives you room for getting all the details. Working on a computer gives so much possibilty, and really endless possibility when it comes to sound, in soundshaping, recording different guitars. You can work on a little detail for a week and probably nobody will notice but it gives a level of satisfaction that you know that everything is worked through, that everything has logical postition and functional position in the music and there isn't anything accidentaly. The main composers are me and Lex Icon. I focused more on the music and he intend to focus more on the lyrics.
Lex Icon
So we balance each otther out because these are equal important parts of our idea is to express things through word and though music and also through our visual apperance. And at the end we sort of come together, blend our ideas in a nice mix. Actually we both have a computer, I have a little studio and he has too. It just takes time and time and more time to fit the pieces together. Basicly it's a long period of working on demos, ideas and different themes and then just swaping them back and forth into each other's system and its quiet easy to send our ideas to each other through the web now. It's like you could exchange the working canvas, it's sort like taking the raw material and just send back and forth and work with it. It's quiet convinient, we don't have to work in a rehearsal room and play on the instruments for weeks. You can work on it seperately but commonly at the same time. It's a good way of working. The music technology is moving in very new and fast directions and even the studior are more or less based on computers. " They even gave up the regulary, 2 times a week, rehearsal schedule: "We have functional rehearsals now, just when we feel we need it. We used to rehearse before, two times a week but in the end it became something like a social club. You know, we just met, fooled around, played cover songs."
Their idea, putting cameras into the studio, letting ppl watch them while they were working was something new in the usual recording proccess too. Unfortunately I missed to check in and I wanted to know if they had any feedback on that and what it was like at all: "I really don`t know any statistics but I had these creepy feeling that a lot of ppl were `spying` on us. We did some intersting trick with the camera here and there, we had some fun with it. I didn`t really give too much attention to it, but I liked the concept. I really wished we could do some live streaming instead of just taking photographs. "
Two guest musician helped The Kovenant out in the studio. One of them is a Erik from Zeromancer but the ohter person is an operasinger, Eileen: "She is a middle aged German soprano, classical trained musician. Has absolutely no background from any rock, pop or metal scene. She was also on Animatronic record and we hooked up with her in Germany when we were there recording that album. She had no background for doing this kind of music so probably it was a challenge for her. It was interesting to work with her because she only analyzed the actual music and the actual ideas of the composition and not really the form, the intstrumentation. That did't really matter so much for her, she focused on the composition. She is a perfectionist with her voice and for us doing recording with her was strange because whenever we were happy with the recording she pointed out some technical aspect of her voice that was not good enough. She is also a vocal teacher so she knows a lot about human voice. She reads music and all this stuff. She doesn't need to sit around for ages and learn the songs. We only spent one day with her in the studio, actually it was me and the a technican who did the recording with her. It was interesting to see what criteria was right or wrong for her. She told me she found it really interseting, particulary the songs she was singing on. She gave us compliements on the composition and on the songwriting but obviously relating to her vocal parts because she didn't sit around listening to the songs over and over because they were finished when she did her parts. "
Erik was their keyboardist and since this instrument has an important role in The Kovenant's music I couldn't understand why don't they try to find a full-time member to join the band. And as always, things are not just black and white: "Basicly the role of programming and keyboarding has been done by me. I did love to programming for this record but we just wanted somebody with a more producer kind of attitude towards programming and soundshaping then we have becaue he ultimately has much more experience in that particulary area so it was intersting to have him in the studio and to work through the songs and the programming to make sure it's well done. We are looking for more members all the time but it's difficult to find the right ppl to be involved full time in a band and to understand our ideas and to complete them with their own ideas. For live performances we do have more ppl who will join us on stage. We are expanding on live set up by two ppl for the coming tour and that's important for us because we want to have more flexibility and improvisation element on stage than we have had in the last few years so that's gonna be a little different. But when it comes to the creative part hopefully we will be able to include some of this ppl when it comes to songwriting and performing on the record as well. But you never really know, perhaps some time ppl are technically very good but don't have the right attitude or the right ideas to fit into the band."
And as always, I put my favourite question to Psy Coma too, which song would he recommend to listen first from the album. In which song can they show the essence of the band to the listeners, which song may make you interested in a band. I always like to hear the composers opinion on it because many times it differs from mine: "If i had to play one song that I personally feel it's explaining the record in the most correct manner I would choose the last track, Industiral Twilight. But there is a tie between the last and the first song, Cyberthrash. For me this two songs represent the idea of the album in the best way. It's not specificly or neccessarily the best songs on the album, these are the songs I feel represent tha album the best way. So, 1 or 12, take your pick. "
Something that musicians don't really like is being compared to other bands. But fans who like bands that don't play typical music are always looking for similar artists. And it's the easiest to ask the specific, non-typical band's members about it:" It's the same old difficult question to answer in a way because you don't want to limit yourself too much but on the other hand it's neccessary to have some points to refer for the ppl to understand what you are doing. I feel what we are doing is somewhat in the tradition of a band like Laibach, which is a stange mutation from an industrial band untill something completely different. But we don't really indentify with this kind of extreme metal anymore and we don't really indentify with electronical music either. We try to identify ourselves with more abstract ideas. I would say The Kovenant is more closely related to Madmax then black metal. That's the kind of ideas we work out of. We try to establish rather concepts and ideas. The post-apocalyptic kind of scenery is important part of our musical universe. " I tried to get some answer asking him about the music he listens at home. But again, I didn't get a simple answer: "Anything from Nick Cave to black metal, it`s a typical answer I guess but I`m trying not to be too consumed by other ppl`s music, I`m trying not be a fan of them I have gained a more analytic view of other ppl`s music last years. Which is a bit annoying in many ways because sometimes I`m not able to put on a record without stargting to over-analyse it."
The last thing we talked about this time was their touring plans: "We are still at the planning stage but the main rough schedule for this year is chronologically ordered: Norwegian tour after the releasing of the record, in April-May, and then we are focusing on festivals, some of them have been confirmed now and more will come hopefully very shortly, then we will focusing on a European tour, perhaps in September-October - a quiet and extensive European tour, in which form it will take place we are not really decid on yet but probably it will be a The Kovenant tour- and then we are going to America. "
Psy Coma
And do you still would like to know what is the meaning of the pseudo Psy Coma?:" It`s quiet a personal representation of what we ... sort of like what we want to do in the band. But the original idea of my name that comes from `physic coma`, is personificate the braindeadness of the modern society in a way. But that`s way too ambitious to talk anymore about myself now, starting to sound a little pretentous. Forget about it We have personal ideas around it but it`s not neccesseraly ideas that we want to express to ppl. It has some significants for us but the main point of our artists name is to present ourselves correctly in the right context."
I hope this interview will help to listen to the latest The Kovenant release a bit differently and if you even not gonna like it, you may look at them from a new point of view. One thing is for sure, they are a band who are not afraid of doing whatever they want. And if you have the opportunity to see their live performance on the upcoming, planned tours, don't miss them.
Read the UM review on S.E.T.I. here
Official The Kovenant Website
Till the early summer of 2002 it got really quiet around the band. Some were afraid they broke up in silence while others just waited patiently. The big news came almost a year ago, The Kovenant was working on a new album. Months have passed. We could take a look into their studio work with the help of live webcams, from time to time they kept us informed on what was going on behind the scene. In March 2003 the wait has ended. Their new album, titled S.E.T.I. has been released and we ended speculating. Now everybody could make a decision if S.E.T.I. is what we had been waiting for or is it something unexpected. We all can hear the changes and now it's only up to us if we like it or not. In the case of such a controversial release, I'm sure everybody have lots of questions to ask from the band so I tried to interrogate Psy Coma about as many things I could come up in February.
The first thing that kept everybody wonder was what might the band have been doing in the 4 years that passed between S.E.T.I. and their previous release Animatronic. "We did pretty much actually. We did a whole year of touring in 2000, European tour, American tour, festivals, Norwegain tour so that was quite a busy year for us. In 2001 we mainly focused on writing new material. We spent a lot of time finding the right new direction to go with and last year we entirely spent with recording of the album. We were in the studio from May till October. We did demo tapes, well acutally demo cds these days and during that time we made a reinterpretated version of our debut album too. Hopefuly we will be able to accelerate things a little bit in the future so we don't have to spend 4 years between every record. It's a long time for us too but it's not like we've been doing nothing. We really haven't payed that so much attention to the time passing it's just suddenly four years have gone. "
Psy Coma himself mentioned the re-release of their first album, In Times Before the Light so I asked him about the why's behind this step. New listeners of a band are always happy to get fresh sounding version of an older record, mostly with bonus stuff while old fans might feel deceived for paying again for almost the same material. But The Kovenant managed to do it differently, not to upset anybody. "Basically we insisted to keep it alive. We had the option to re-release, to re-issue the album again because it was not being pressed anymore. We decided to do that on Hammerheart but the main problem was that the record was done by old obsolete record equipment so unfortunately we had lost some of the original material, particulary the keyboard tracks were all corrupted. So we decided to do the record again, the keep it available instead of keeping it like a mysterious old piece of work. We are kind of ppl who start to do something we are not really able to stop until we shake everything upside down. It became quiet experimental, sort of a freaking out project. It's not really meant to be a replacement of the first version, it's rather a new version, its the 2002 version. It also has a new cover. We were never really happy with the original artwork. We just wanted a cover that explain the experimental, that multiply the diverse direction we have done with it. It's a very energetic, strange new version and we needed a new album cover to that." And he kept talking a bit about the re-making of it: "It was done in my own studio. I spent a few months with it, the beginning of last year. But i was done in corporation with the new record. We were working in parallel on the old record and as well we were working on the demos for the new records. We can say from January till May we were doing the new version and also the new demos."
Since we got a clear explanation for the existence of the new version of their debute album, the question pops up obviously if they have thought about making a new version of Nexus Polaris, their other record that is still close to their black metal roots. For those who would like to hear something like that, Psy Coma's answer will be disappointing: "With the first album we felt it was a little bit unaccomplished, those songs had more potential than we were able to do witht he first version. We thought we could do it in a different way. The Nexus Polaris album I feel is quite accomplished, we took it its the highest point we could and I don't feel that there is any room for doing much differently with it. Though I think we will do that because we are working on live things, and we are rearraning the older songs making them fit nicely together with the new stuff. It's like finding the middle way between the songs to make an insterseting live sound. So actually we are doing some modification with the old songs for a live set up. But nothing else is planned with them. "
At this point I felt it was time to talk about their new album, S.E.T.I. and about the changes I felt while I was litening to this album. Psy Coma approached this subject from a different point of view while we, listeners are mainly concentrate on the stlyle change and the fact that they are getting further from their black metal roots. "For us there is a big change in songwriting, we focused much clearly on song structures, song arrangements and complexity instead of just riffing and things like that. Guitars used to be a very dominant part of the band. They are still dominant in the music just not the most, the only important part of the music. They are just one part of the idea, it's more based on the idea of the song and the melodies. In one way we can say so or at least I would say we are getting closer to our own sound. It's going further from other things as well. I don't see the purpose on getting further from metal or from any other genres, I just feel we are getting closer to our own ideas." May we consider this as natural developement? In some extense it is, as Psy Coma states. "We are always conscious of what we do. We carefully think through what is the right way for us to move the the band, if it is the direction we want to move in. It's not all coincidental progression, because we have ideas what direction we want and what sound we want. So I guess, it's a mixture of both. But none of them include being more accessible or selling more records."
With his answer we arrived to marshland. What is more important, the expectations of the fans or their own, quite new ideas? Should they upset their fans, following their own insticts or should they produce the same material again and again? Will their fans like the new stuff or they rather would like to go for the well-known? "Maybe or maybe not, I'm not sure. I've got quiet diverse feedback on that. Some ppl expected something completely different from what we did and a lot of ppl expected a countinuation of the Animatronic sound, involved more electronica and more experimental things. It's always difficult to relate what ppl might expect. But that's ultimately not such a big concern for us either we know we can't confirm to other the ppl's ideas, we have to follow our own soul. We put these things aside when we write new material because there are so many expectations and different thoughts about things and we can't really follow those direction. It's a bit changelling for us to come up with something unexpected and hopefully something new. That's a part of the idea of the band, being musically challenging and not always conformning. We are not there for background music, we take your attention. The record is so fresh now, we haven't really analyzed it so much yet and at this point it's a bit difficult to self analyze. I'm sure we can analyze the positive and negative side of the record in a year or so. We had a pre-listening session in Germany in January with journalists. They were very positive about it. I know there are always diverse opinions and we seemed to be a band that are able to polarize opinions as well in a sense of there are a lot of ppl who hate us and there are a lot ppl who love us. That means we have effect on ppl. Which is good, because it's bettern than being ignored and unfulfilled in sense of what you doing. We have a talent for creating discussion and strong feelings toward our things and that's a positive thing. "
I think people will discuss their new image as well, not just the new direction of the music. The futuristic looking promo pictures made me curious who might have been their designer: "We have a sponsorship with a German clothing company that provides some stuff for us. Actually we wanted it because we are big fans of their stuff and we wanted to use it. The live shows are gonna be taken to quiet a new level. Additional to this kind of imagery will obviously completed with big stunning soundcapes and musically it will involve a whole new visional production as well. We are going to use video metarial in quiet an awful way, it will have a strong impact and I'm not sure ppl are gonna be able to witness it for 1,5 hours because it's a little intense. It's probably a little compareable to 'Clockwork Orange'. If you are not familiar with it, it's sort like a sublime, propaganda, brainwashing movie. It's like a fast moving rhythmical video that is totally rhytmically programmed in time with key elements in the music. Particulary things in the music goes along with particular images of a video rhytmically programmed and it all becomes kind of a suble intense package together. It looks a bit like if we are trying to brainwash our audience. But it's very interesting and it's gonna be a very intense package and I hope we can afford to bring this all over at least Europe because these kind of equipments that we need are a bit expensive and difficult to bring around. But it's all controlled in real time life from the stage together with the keyboards actually.- Actually we are also working on putting together a bugdet and the right ppl for a video, a low budget video for the track 'Star by Star'. It will be a sort of a presentation video of the band, whick keeps focus on the band members and the musical appearaence and on the song of course. So, it won't have a story line or anything else like that, it will be just a basic video to present the band to the viewing audience of the music tv channels .. hopefully."
The new album title S.E.T.I. is the abbreviation of 'Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence'. This title offers the sea of explanations for its meaning. You may like sci-fi stories, you might be interested in space research, or simple might be sarcastic on humanity. Before I could have read the lyrics and forming my version of the band's possible concept for S.E.T.I. I asked Psy Coma about it: "Obviously it gives you associations to sci-fi things but for us it's not about the direct meaning of the Search for extra terrestrial intelligence. It's more a metaphorical way of saying that we are kind of a searching, seeking, exploring band sometimes we feel that what we are doing musically is sort of like looking for little green men, it's rather get away from describing what we are doing. We are trying to be musical pioneers looking for new life forms in music and also with the ideas we have. That's our intetion, sounds a bit ambitous right now but that's at least the way we identify ourselves. It can have a lot of meaning but that was the initial significant it has for us and for the record. It's sort of an umbrella to put everything we do under it. We try to avoid being very direct because we don't feel we have any direct specific ideas we want to tell you or write down. We have ideas, subjects, feelings and atmospheres we want to express and we try to avoid being too direct in it because we are not a political group, we are just a band who wants to express our feelings and certain things but we don't have direct messages." And the lyrics " on a deeper level are about existential things, life and creation and religion.... etc. There are a little in the tradition of conspiracy theories I think. The concept is based on that everybody is conspiracing and there is a lot of hidden agenda. It`s kinda like a cyberpunk, a bit rebellious. But there are certainly a lot of futuristic technology things in the topics, some of the songs are about current state of men and technology, sort of like a border line between humanity and technology."
Men and technology. The proper turn to talk about the making of the album. When the first news got published last year we were told they composed the new material mostly on computers. That was the first sign of the new direction of their might have taken. We all know working on computers has a lot of advantages but doesn't it ruining the spirit of art? The Kovenant is really the metal child of the 21st century, they didn't leave anything to chance. Using computers for composing music is different comparing to the 'old-fashioned' way: "The main difference is that you are able to explore everything in a much bigger detail. We don't have to wait untill we go into the studio to hear how will we sound in the end. We could record things with the computer or in my home studio with my equipements. It gives you the possibility to work on your own ideas and sound and it also gives you room for getting all the details. Working on a computer gives so much possibilty, and really endless possibility when it comes to sound, in soundshaping, recording different guitars. You can work on a little detail for a week and probably nobody will notice but it gives a level of satisfaction that you know that everything is worked through, that everything has logical postition and functional position in the music and there isn't anything accidentaly. The main composers are me and Lex Icon. I focused more on the music and he intend to focus more on the lyrics.
Lex Icon
So we balance each otther out because these are equal important parts of our idea is to express things through word and though music and also through our visual apperance. And at the end we sort of come together, blend our ideas in a nice mix. Actually we both have a computer, I have a little studio and he has too. It just takes time and time and more time to fit the pieces together. Basicly it's a long period of working on demos, ideas and different themes and then just swaping them back and forth into each other's system and its quiet easy to send our ideas to each other through the web now. It's like you could exchange the working canvas, it's sort like taking the raw material and just send back and forth and work with it. It's quiet convinient, we don't have to work in a rehearsal room and play on the instruments for weeks. You can work on it seperately but commonly at the same time. It's a good way of working. The music technology is moving in very new and fast directions and even the studior are more or less based on computers. " They even gave up the regulary, 2 times a week, rehearsal schedule: "We have functional rehearsals now, just when we feel we need it. We used to rehearse before, two times a week but in the end it became something like a social club. You know, we just met, fooled around, played cover songs."
Their idea, putting cameras into the studio, letting ppl watch them while they were working was something new in the usual recording proccess too. Unfortunately I missed to check in and I wanted to know if they had any feedback on that and what it was like at all: "I really don`t know any statistics but I had these creepy feeling that a lot of ppl were `spying` on us. We did some intersting trick with the camera here and there, we had some fun with it. I didn`t really give too much attention to it, but I liked the concept. I really wished we could do some live streaming instead of just taking photographs. "
Two guest musician helped The Kovenant out in the studio. One of them is a Erik from Zeromancer but the ohter person is an operasinger, Eileen: "She is a middle aged German soprano, classical trained musician. Has absolutely no background from any rock, pop or metal scene. She was also on Animatronic record and we hooked up with her in Germany when we were there recording that album. She had no background for doing this kind of music so probably it was a challenge for her. It was interesting to work with her because she only analyzed the actual music and the actual ideas of the composition and not really the form, the intstrumentation. That did't really matter so much for her, she focused on the composition. She is a perfectionist with her voice and for us doing recording with her was strange because whenever we were happy with the recording she pointed out some technical aspect of her voice that was not good enough. She is also a vocal teacher so she knows a lot about human voice. She reads music and all this stuff. She doesn't need to sit around for ages and learn the songs. We only spent one day with her in the studio, actually it was me and the a technican who did the recording with her. It was interesting to see what criteria was right or wrong for her. She told me she found it really interseting, particulary the songs she was singing on. She gave us compliements on the composition and on the songwriting but obviously relating to her vocal parts because she didn't sit around listening to the songs over and over because they were finished when she did her parts. "
Erik was their keyboardist and since this instrument has an important role in The Kovenant's music I couldn't understand why don't they try to find a full-time member to join the band. And as always, things are not just black and white: "Basicly the role of programming and keyboarding has been done by me. I did love to programming for this record but we just wanted somebody with a more producer kind of attitude towards programming and soundshaping then we have becaue he ultimately has much more experience in that particulary area so it was intersting to have him in the studio and to work through the songs and the programming to make sure it's well done. We are looking for more members all the time but it's difficult to find the right ppl to be involved full time in a band and to understand our ideas and to complete them with their own ideas. For live performances we do have more ppl who will join us on stage. We are expanding on live set up by two ppl for the coming tour and that's important for us because we want to have more flexibility and improvisation element on stage than we have had in the last few years so that's gonna be a little different. But when it comes to the creative part hopefully we will be able to include some of this ppl when it comes to songwriting and performing on the record as well. But you never really know, perhaps some time ppl are technically very good but don't have the right attitude or the right ideas to fit into the band."
And as always, I put my favourite question to Psy Coma too, which song would he recommend to listen first from the album. In which song can they show the essence of the band to the listeners, which song may make you interested in a band. I always like to hear the composers opinion on it because many times it differs from mine: "If i had to play one song that I personally feel it's explaining the record in the most correct manner I would choose the last track, Industiral Twilight. But there is a tie between the last and the first song, Cyberthrash. For me this two songs represent the idea of the album in the best way. It's not specificly or neccessarily the best songs on the album, these are the songs I feel represent tha album the best way. So, 1 or 12, take your pick. "
Something that musicians don't really like is being compared to other bands. But fans who like bands that don't play typical music are always looking for similar artists. And it's the easiest to ask the specific, non-typical band's members about it:" It's the same old difficult question to answer in a way because you don't want to limit yourself too much but on the other hand it's neccessary to have some points to refer for the ppl to understand what you are doing. I feel what we are doing is somewhat in the tradition of a band like Laibach, which is a stange mutation from an industrial band untill something completely different. But we don't really indentify with this kind of extreme metal anymore and we don't really indentify with electronical music either. We try to identify ourselves with more abstract ideas. I would say The Kovenant is more closely related to Madmax then black metal. That's the kind of ideas we work out of. We try to establish rather concepts and ideas. The post-apocalyptic kind of scenery is important part of our musical universe. " I tried to get some answer asking him about the music he listens at home. But again, I didn't get a simple answer: "Anything from Nick Cave to black metal, it`s a typical answer I guess but I`m trying not to be too consumed by other ppl`s music, I`m trying not be a fan of them I have gained a more analytic view of other ppl`s music last years. Which is a bit annoying in many ways because sometimes I`m not able to put on a record without stargting to over-analyse it."
The last thing we talked about this time was their touring plans: "We are still at the planning stage but the main rough schedule for this year is chronologically ordered: Norwegian tour after the releasing of the record, in April-May, and then we are focusing on festivals, some of them have been confirmed now and more will come hopefully very shortly, then we will focusing on a European tour, perhaps in September-October - a quiet and extensive European tour, in which form it will take place we are not really decid on yet but probably it will be a The Kovenant tour- and then we are going to America. "
Psy Coma
And do you still would like to know what is the meaning of the pseudo Psy Coma?:" It`s quiet a personal representation of what we ... sort of like what we want to do in the band. But the original idea of my name that comes from `physic coma`, is personificate the braindeadness of the modern society in a way. But that`s way too ambitious to talk anymore about myself now, starting to sound a little pretentous. Forget about it We have personal ideas around it but it`s not neccesseraly ideas that we want to express to ppl. It has some significants for us but the main point of our artists name is to present ourselves correctly in the right context."
I hope this interview will help to listen to the latest The Kovenant release a bit differently and if you even not gonna like it, you may look at them from a new point of view. One thing is for sure, they are a band who are not afraid of doing whatever they want. And if you have the opportunity to see their live performance on the upcoming, planned tours, don't miss them.
Read the UM review on S.E.T.I. here
Official The Kovenant Website
