Covenant Album: “Skyshaper [Bonus CD]”

***I'm reviewing the Limited Edition version that includes a bonus disc. Amazon.com, as of this writing, doesn't have it in stock yet and therefore no place for me to post this review, so I'm posting it here.***

"Skyshaper" took me a few listens to really get won over. It's a natural progression from "Northern Lights", with a touch of "United States Of Mind". It's a great album for Covenant fans, but I don't know if it'll win over any new ones.

The whole album is pretty solid, filled with mostly clubby dance tunes ("Ritual Noise", "Brave New World", "Pulse", "The Men", "Spindrift") along with a atmospheric, mid-tempo groover ("Greater Than The Sun"), a ballad ("The World Is Growing Loud") and a few that are out of Covenant's norm (the odd Moog driven "Happy Man", the harder-than-usual "Sweet & Salty").

"20 hz" is my favorite track, and could possibly be one of my favorite Covenant songs of all time. I could listen to it all day. I really love the raver synths at the beginning, then enters a rhythmic sample of someone struggling for breath as if to embody the struggle to survive in the Big City, as portrayed in the lyrics ("... people come and go, so many different faces, as the city passes by, I watch their tired eyes, journeys never made, broken dreams of leaving, fill the streets with dust...) Then the killer bass synth comes in, along with the 4/4 bass drum, and as soon as that snare drum starts hitting half way through the first verse, it's all over. Get down and boogie already. This song is worth the price of the CD alone.

The three song bonus disc, unfortunately, is fairly lame. The first song is an instrumental called "Subterfugue For 3 Absynths" . It's as pretentious as it sounds as it's 42 minutes of pretty much the exact same rhythm/synth line with only subtle variations. I can't even listen to it all of the way though, I made it about 10 minutes in before skipping around, finding out that it hardly changes, and then skipping it altogether. Either this is genius at work and I'm not seeing it or it is musical masturbation. Either way, I don't want to listen to it. The second track, "Relief", is a standard song with vocals and it's decent. The third track is a remix of "Ritual Noise", I like the album version better. Not too keen on most remixes anyway.

The packaging is great, a lot of black, white and grey colors are used in the design. The booklet features lyrics, photos of the band as well as landscape shots of Iceland. But what really does it for me are the liner notes for each and every song, as well as a foreword reflecting on the entire album. I loves me some inner thought. I'm not sure if this booklet is the same as the normal version.

No question Covenant is the Depeche Mode/New Order of this new order of techno bands and SkyShaper doesn't disappoint. With one foot always on the dance floor and the other heavily into crafting a song, this is a great effort by the band.

I particularly enjoyed the constant references to travelling, either by car or train and this continual need to capture movement is executed brilliantly by this band. (Remember Helicopter off one of their older albums?)

They even loosen up a bit and sound remarkably like the Magnetic Fields on "Happy Man" with a bouncy, mid-tempo techno song that has Covenant sounding like I've never heard them before.

This is a band that is confident with their musical directions and with each album they expand further beyond the repetitive, overly programmed multitude of imitators in their genre.

This just may be my least favorite Covenant album, it's not that it's bad, it is just very mundane. There are a couple of good tracks on here, but most of the songs are instantly forgettable and just blah. And the songs that are good are really not stand-out tracks, they're just good and nothing more. So overall I would call Skyshaper an average album. It seems like all the old EBM / Futurepop stand-bys are faltering, it's sad to see Covenant being added to the list. The album flows nicely, but it's just so boring I could not take much enjoyment from it.

I am a fan of Covenant , I always was. Never I have been let down by their music and I rate very high their releases named : Sequencer, Northern Lights and United States Of Mind.

Skyshaper is a bit slow for me , not quite what I expected and Ritual Noise sounds too familiar , almost if I heard it on one of their older albums. I think that is the problem that it sounds not cutting edge enough as with the previous releases. Maybe time will pass and I grow to like this album more , but so far I did not think of playing it too often.

I am somewhat disapointed with this release from Covenant. It is a somewhat boring repetative group of songs. The only song on the cd that seems to stand out for me is Brave New World. The lyrics on most of the songs are really fairly simplistic, and the music doesn't stand out as anything really innovative. I like Covenant quite abit, so as I said I was expecting more from this release. Northern Lights, and Untied States of Mind are much better Cd's than this. I can listen to to it, but I don't find myself being drawn to listening to it like I was with the previously mentioned Cd's from Covenant. Happy Man is decent, but very very simple. Ritual noise, and Sweet and Salty are to repetative. AS I said Brave New World is the best track on the Cd. I don't really find any of these to be Club floor killers. Overall worth buying, but don't expect to much from it. Of course this is all just my opinion.