COVEN
'Worship
New Gods'
(Shadow
Kingdom Records)
This
is the Michigan Coven [Coven 13 nowadays - ED], not to be confused with the Pacific
Northwest or Chicago bands that used the same moniker. Also up front
you should know this is a re-release of an album the band released in
1987, but it was only ever released on vinyl! So does this fall into
the hidden or forgotten gem category, I would say the answer is yes
it does. I find their music very cool, quite hypnotic and leisurely
paced but still heavy metal and not really slowing down into the doom
regions. The vocalist has this very obscure, laid back trippy vocal
delivery much of the time and I really like that, he does turn up the
emotion now and then and even has an epic Norse (reflecting the lyric
imagery) flair about his vocals. Now that I think about it I might
have to take the doom comment back as now and then Candlemass
comes to mind. But I must say Coven on this album have a sound
of their own. I mean I can list a couple bands just to give you an
idea of the type of melodic, atmospheric heavy metal they play. Some
bands like Manilla Road, Omen, Cirith Ungol come
to mind as having a vaguely similar sound and more than anything
probably a similar pacing to their music. I'm not saying this was the
ultimate find of all finds, but I am damn happy someone dusted off
this cool album and brought it back out of obscurity for us all to
enjoy and give the album some new life. This is my first meeting with
Shadow Kingdom Records, going by this release and looking over their
roster of releases I hope to be hearing again from this label and
soon!
(Dale
Roy)
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