Covenant – The Blinding Dark

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3 years after 'Leaving Babylon'

'Covenant' has been provid­ing the scene with great, dark dance music for over 20 years now. The band line up changed a lot of times and so the music­al path did, too. 'The Blinding Dark' is an awe­some title for their ninth stu­dio album. The har­binger 'Sounds Mirrors' in August this year hit like a bomb. Will the shock wave con­tin­ue to spread on the album?

The bright side of the blinding dark

Let's start with the high­lights. 'Sound Mirrors'  is already heavy on club rota­tion since August. This track should already be well-known, and there's no need to ques­tion the great­ness of this uber-hit anymore.

I espe­cially like the track 'Cold Reading'. It starts with some clas­sic SciFi sound samples and it has the 'Covenant' typ­ic­al but very subtle noise in the back­ground escort­ing the whole track's length. This song really reminds me of some of their 90s songs.

The song 'I Close My Eyes' is really some­thing new in the 'Covenant' uni­verse. It wraps itself in a mid-tempo kind of swinging beat. Really relax­ing it drifts more into the Synth Pop genre than any oth­er song before. The fol­low­ing song 'Morning Star', on the oth­er hand, is an ice-cold elec­tro bas­tard with rather moody beats. The son­ic­ally feel­ing sweeps between grim and mel­an­chol­ic – it's  an awe­somely dark track.

The song "Dies Irae" is accom­pan­ied by spher­ic­al sur­faces and thus reaches a spe­cial 70s Space Age atti­tude. Eskil's gentle voice float­ing over it all cov­ers my skin with goose­bumps. Somehow, the song line holds a plaint­ive feel­ing as if telling from things long lost in the past.

Some serious words

How would you rate a track that gives you 2:10 minutes of windy noises? Right, but due to my big respect of 'Covenant' I give gen­er­ous 2 stars for the intro 'Fulwell'. How about over 5 minutes of deep slow bongo drum sounds? The outro 'Summon Your Spirit' (which is an altern­at­ive instru­ment­al ver­sion of the track 'Rider On A White Horse') provides this on 'The Blinding Dark'. Sorry, but 2 stars for that too. Also the two unne­ces­sary, instru­ment­al inter­ludes I have to devalu­ate with 2 stars each.

And then there is this song 'Rider On A White Horse' that I already men­tioned. Well, usu­ally I am reward­ing vari­ety on an album. In this case, how­ever, I find the track totally deprec­ated. This is a duet in the style of a strange kind of west­ern coun­try song in an elec­tron­ic wrap up. With all respect, but this song does not work for me.

Final results

It's a very mixed album both by qual­ity and music style. And I feel a deep pain and much sor­row to rate this album strictly track by track, but these are the rules on Electrozombies that every album has to face here. Without these men­tioned black­outs in the Some ser­i­ous words sec­tion, the album could have had a gor­geous 4.5 star rat­ing! In oth­er words 'The Blinding Dark' is an awe­some 6‑track EP with 5 addi­tion­al, trivi­al gap fillers.

As a long term fan of 'Covenant' I pre­ordered the deluxe ver­sion of 'The Blinding Dark' and I know I will be happy with it. Sure, this isn't an album to kneel down for. Rather is this album to be valu­ated as one of the weak­est stu­dio per­form­ance over­all yet. But with the few high­lights a def­in­itely buy­ing recom­mend­a­tion for every 'Covenant' fan.

Track By Track Rating

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Covenant – The Blinding Dark
Fulwell
I Close My Eyes
Morning Star
Cold Reading
Rider On A White Horse
Interlude
Dies Irae
Sound Mirrors
Interlude
If I Give My Soul
Summon Your Spirit
Recommend
Sound Mirrors
Cold Reading
Morning Star
Weak
Fulwell
Rider On A White Horse
Interlude (both)
Summon Your Spirit
3.3
A few peaks

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Founder
  1. I really don't unter­stand the dis­a­point­ment with the men­tioned tracks. Especially Summon Your Spirit is pure geni­us as a closer to this atyp­ic­al intro­spect­ive Covenant album. Well, if you prefer dance beats over atmo­sphere, this record will not be your cup of tea.

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Fulwell
I Close My Eyes
Morning Star
Cold Reading
Rider On A White Horse
Interlude
Dies Irae
Sound Mirrors
Interlude
If I Give My Soul
Summon Your Spirit
Final Score