Monday, November 30, 2020

The Kovenant - "SETI" [2003]

Artist: The Kovenant
Title: SETI
Genre: Industrial Metal, "Cyber Metal"
Country: Norway
Release date: 2003

Track List: 

  1. Cybertrash
  2. Planet of the Apes
  3. Star by Star
  4. Via Negativa
  5. Stillborn Universe
  6. Acid Theater
  7. The Perfect End
  8. Neon
  9. Keepers of the Garden
  10. Pantomime
  11. Hollow Earth
  12. Industrial Twilight
  13. Subtopia (bonus)
  14. The Memory Remains (Metallica cover)

Yeah, one of the songs from this album gave the name to my blog, and we've finally got to it. At the time, "SETI" was as controversial among "true" metal fans as "Wildhoney" by Tiamat, for pretty much the same reasons (being too electronic and experimental). But nowadays, "Animatronic" and "SETI" are considered to be the seminal albums in the "cyber metal" subgenre, even they might have be a massive disappointment to those fans of The Kovenant who have expected a sequel to their 1997 symphonic black metal masterpiece "Nexus Polaris" (yes, I know, it was released under the moniker "Covenant", but the band had to alther their name a bit to avoid confusion with the Swedish synthpop/EBM act under the same name, which is also very good). 

I was a big fan of this album during my early metal days, and still consider it to me one of the prime examples of so-called "cyber metal". Can't put my finger at any favourite tracks, since pretty much every song on "SETI" is highly memorable. The lyrics, that unsurprisingly deal mostly with sci-fi/cyberpunk/dystopian themes, are worth reading too, even if they aren't as "deep" as I thought during my teenage years. Sadly, the last album in the Lex Icon, and Psy Coma's trilogy, "Aria Galactica", never came to light, although the fans of THE Kovenant (including me) still have some hope even after almost two decades.

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