The Kovenant is Working on Their First New Album in Over 20 Years
Industrial metal fans rejoice. Why? Because the Norwegian band The Kovenant has made their return. Not only to the stage but also to the studio, since they’re officially working on their first new album in more than two decades.
The band’s vocalist and bassist Stian “Nagash” Arnesen, along with the band’s other singer Sarah Jezebel Deva, did an interview with Metal Hammer where they talked about their reunion and return to recording. You can watch the whole interview below, but you can get a taste of the meat of it by reading on.
About the former, Nagash said this (as transcribed by Blabbermouth.net:
”Over the years, we kind of lost contact with each other ’cause we’re so busy with other bands. Hellhammer has Mayhem and some of the other guys [were involved with] other [projects] like Arcturus and Dimmu Borgir. Sarah was involved with other stuff, like Therion and Cradle of Filth and stuff. But over the years, we kind of glided apart a little bit, but it started very randomly that we started just talking together again, and we all just clicked very easily together. So it went very fast when we said, like, ‘What if we actually fucking joined together again and started playing?’ And everyone said ‘yes’ without hesitation. So we quickly started thinking, like. ‘Fuck, how should we start this?’ So we found a really great management — Håkon Grav, he does also Emperor and he used to work for Scream magazine, so I know him from there, in Norway. We managed to talk him into bringing us on, and it went just really fast from there. We just met, all of us had some quick rehearsals and it was like we never fucking stopped playing. It was, like, ‘Did we play last month?, like this. It was like a natural chemistry between all of us. So it was really fun to play together.”
Deva added:
“It did really happen so fast. It’s like all making phone calls and [sending] e-mails and reconnecting back to each other, and you’re thinking, ‘Oh, it’s gonna take ages for any of this to come together.’ And then suddenly you tell us about Håkon and then suddenly this show appears, this first show, and it’s, like, ‘Wow, that was really fast.’ You didn’t have time to think. So if you were thinking about backing out, it was tough, because your flights were booked. It was so, so fast. It’s, like, ‘Well, Sarah, can you do this? And Sarah, can you do that?’ And I’m, like, ‘Oh, I’ve gotta say yes now because I said yes to everybody else.’ And it was so incredibly fast before that first show was booked, and then more shows were coming in and more shows, and it’s, like, ‘Well, this is it. It’s happening.’ It’s like literally a matter of months, it was.”
When it comes to where The Kovenant is in the songwriting process, Nagash said:
“We already have lots of demos done. So, in the next several months now, we’re gonna get together and put together maybe two or three songs, something like this, which we’re gonna release early, to get people to know that we are actually back, not to just wait for a new album. And I think it would be unfair to put that much pressure on everyone in the band, ’cause I think a lot of people, when they hear that ‘Nexus’ lineup is back together that it will be a ‘Nexus Polaris Number Two’, which it will not be that, but it will be similar, as I said. So I think that by us releasing maybe one, two, three new songs before an actual album comes out, it will help us to be more easy, like it will be easier to create stuff for us, so we don’t feel like, ‘Okay, people want ‘Nexus Two’, so we have to do ‘Nexus Two’.’ But we already have lots of demo stuff prepared. I even have some stuff on my phone, new stuff. Some of the stuff sounds like ‘Nexus Polaris’, some of the stuff sounds totally new, some of it has hints of ‘SETI’ and ‘Animatronic’, the first album, but for sure it will be more extreme, it will be more metal. It will be experimental, but it will be darker and more metal.”
I’m still not entirely sure when the album is coming out, and I don’t know if they know that either. But, at least it’s coming!
