Covenant Interview

Whilst the EBM theme of Covenant's music is still quite prominent I have noticed elements of House being brought in on various tracks on United States Of Mind, is it your deliberate intention to stretch the EBM genre into new areas? Our music can be said to rest upon three separate cornerstones: the New Romantic synthpop of the early 80's that we grew up on as teenagers, the mid-80's EBM sound à la Nitzer Ebb/Front 242 and the electronic dance music of the 90's. Music is a powerful force and to us as kids it meant the world. If you are such a person I think the music you grow up with fuses with your personality forever. It becomes a part of you. But as you grow it gets increasingly important to widen your horizons, to keep your eyes and ears open for possible ways to develop and search for different ways of expressing yourself. As a musician a good way to stay vital is to explore as many styles as possible. Then you can create a "library" in your mind and you gain a wider perspective that allows you see things in a more creative way. Covenant has had as a goal all from the beginning to keep moving and search for the sound of the future, as we want it to be. We look upon it as a kind of time machine that we've built for ourselves. We will keep combining different styles in different ways, adding and subtracting until there are no more possible combinations. The important thing is the filter you use, i.e. your own personality, to look upon the world around you. What comes out of that filter will forever be coloured and transformed by your own unique character. In our case one aspect of that filter is EBM, so a better way of expressing it is to say that EBM will definitely be an element in our music no matter what area we choose to enter.

But as leaders of the genre, is United States Of Mind perhaps killing off EBM music, as we know it? Is EBM relevant as a genre anymore? We have seen Industrial bands trying to fuse with drum and bass for example, does EBM require a similar kick-start or change of direction to prevent it becoming stale? We are not interested in killing off anything. We just do what we feel is the right thing to do. I understand that being one of the prominent acts in any style also means that you have a certain obligation to your fans. But we can't see the point of flogging a dead horse. EBM committed suicide years ago and we had nothing to do with that. A genre doesn't die from development. The real enemy is stagnation. EBM was too busy finding that Skinny Puppy distortion magic that it didn't notice the feedback loop strangling it. But it lives on in our memories and in our hearts. I'll never forget the thrill I felt when I first heard Join In the Chant or Warlok. That passion is forever linked with our music and in a way we'll keep EBM alive as long as we make music. Honour the dead by remembering them!

Many followers of Covenant will be surprised at how completely different United States Of Mind is to previous Covenant releases, do you feel as though you might be taking a risk at all? Of course there is always a risk when you take sharp turns. But we have always taken drastic steps. When Sequencer came out in 1996 nobody liked it because it was too much techno, too simple, too much this and that. Today it's recognised as an immortal classic of the 90's. We think it's important to break rules and to never do what is expected from you. And that applies to life just as well as it does to music. So far we have made it every time and I think people are more open minded than ever before. United States of Mind is the next stop on our journey and we hope that our old fans will join us for the ride. There is no greater thrill than to travel full throttle and see where the road takes you. We promise that you won't be harmed and we guarantee a few acrobatic tricks for your pleasure as well.

The album still has Eskil’s trademark vocal style and this unique Covenant aura around it, is it important to you that you do not move too far away from what people have always liked about Covenant? Our sound is something that comes from our personalities and Eskil's voice. We like a certain type of sounds and we produce everything ourselves, so it's more or less unavoidable to sound like Covenant when you actually are Covenant. But of course there is a special Covenant spirit that probably wouldn't be there if we didn't do it ourselves. That's the beauty of being a band. The synergy and the unification of our different creative talents are a fascinating process to experience.

Would I be correct in assuming that previous albums concentrated more on the rhythms, but with the new album you have focused more on melody? Yes and no. United States of Mind is probably the most rhythmically interesting album we've made, but the focus isn't as concentrated on hard-hitting EBM/techno mayhem as our former albums used to be. We discovered that melodies are also rhythms. We wanted a more holistic attitude on this album, to work harder to make beats and melodies play together. That's actually where our dance influences come in. We worked closely with underground dance DJ's for periods of the recordings to find out how that scene works. By getting familiar with the mechanisms of club music we found a way to allow melody, beats and noise to get along instead of competing for attention.

I have noticed on the album that the whole theme is to uplift people both lyrically and with the introduction of the House element. This is somewhat opposite to previous works. Does this reflect a change in the band mentally over the years? That is actually what the title is about. United States of Mind means basically two things: We are a band, three people in alliance uniting our minds to do what we do. The second and most important meaning is that in order to make this world a desirable place to live in we have to co-operate and communicate. All of mankind should get together and create a global United States of Mind instead of wasting time arguing about meaningless things like revenge, territory and disappointment. We didn't want to contribute any more to this bitter and self-destructive attitude. In Buddhism and existentialism the basic notions are that you are responsible for your own happiness as well as for everyone else's. Life is pain and every day is an obstacle that you have to overcome. Then you have two choices; either you can complain and tell yourself that this sucks and give up, or you can say this sucks and do something about it. United States of Mind is our effort to make the second choice.

The track Humility is a particularly optimistic track, and again lyrically quite different to what we might expect, do you feel that people often ignore the beauty in life itself or are you just complying with the whole ethos of House music which is to have a good time and enjoy life? It's a way to try to appreciate life. After all there are many wonderful reasons to be alive. It's just that we tend to concentrate on the bad parts because they crave more attention. If you feel good you're seldom aware of the fact that you have no problems at the moment. Humility is a reflection on that sometimes it's necessary to be actively happy or at least content with life. Even if it's a struggle to live we have wondrous beauty all around us. Beautiful people and a vast world full of nice things hidden behind all the ugliness. That's what the song is about. The House ethos is just plain silly if you ask me. But there is not necessarily a connection between mindlessness and "happy" lyrics. Even intelligent people feel good every now and then, you know.

I think the overriding feeling I get from the album is that now Covenant have something to say where as before you tended to let the music do all the talking before, is this assumption correct? We have always been picky with the lyrics. I actually think that if you have nothing to say you'd better shut up and make instrumental music. The one thing that annoys me the most with pop music is all the meaningless clichés that people come up with just because they're expected to sing. But you are right that we changed our style a little on United States of Mind. On our former albums the lyrics have almost always been very abstract, cryptic and loaded with cross-references, symbols and analogies. I did that because I wanted to give suggestions for the listeners to interpret in their own context without actually giving any clear messages. A bit like lyrical impressionism.This time we thought that we should try a more direct tone. To speak in a more personal voice, a dialogue instead of a monologue. We made that decision because we believe in communication and to communicate you must use a reasonably legible nomenclature. It was a bit hard to find a way to do that without oversimplifying things but I think it worked out fine.

I have a quote from you that appeared some time ago in a magazine, it says, "There are too many stupid bastards writing nonsense just for the sake of it". I know it may be unfair to drag up an old quote but do you still feel strongly about how music should be written and presented? I don't think I used the phrase "stupid bastards", it doesn't sound like me, but it's basically correct. I believe in honesty and quality. We all make our mistakes but there is so much completely irrelevant nonsense polluting our minds already, so I think that creative people should try a little harder sometimes. I mean, if you have the opportunity to be heard you should show your listeners the respect to at least try your best.

The song Tour De Force is an interesting one, is this paying homage to Kraftwerk in some way? I think I noticed a Tour De France sample in there somewhere. Kraftwerk's classic single has nothing to do with Tour de Force. The only Kraftwerk sample on the album is in the beginning of Dead Stars; the "ein, zwei, drei, vier" one. Tour de Force means "a feat of strength" (according to my Oxford English dictionary) or to do something 100% with all your heart. And that's exactly what the lyrics are about. We never thought about the similarity to Tour de France. But as you mention it the noise loop we use is a little reminiscent of the bicycle noises…

The Europa LP was not nearly as well received in the UK as Sequencer, was there a need with United States Of Mind to return to form somewhat? Were you aware that Europa was falling short of people's expectations of Covenant? Europa sold more than twice the number of copies of Sequencer and it's an album that we were very happy with. I know that Sequencer is regarded as one of the definitive electro albums of the 90's, and I agree, but Europa had in general better reviews and was a much bigger commercial success. Maybe some people would regard that as a sell-out, which it most definitely was not. We were actually well aware that many old hardcore fans would probably not like Europa. But we couldn't see the point in making a Sequencer II. We had taken that concept as far as we could and wanted to try something else. Just like we have done with United States of Mind. We make music out of passion and curiosity, not to please anyone else. It's our chosen form of expression and I definitely think that we wouldn't have come this far if we hadn't done what we believe in.