Skyshaper

Covenant (Artist) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (March 7, 2006)
• Original Release Date: 2006
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Metropolis Records
• ASIN: B000E6GBWQ
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #181,637 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Skyshaper shines. Still the best band in the genre, March 7, 2006

By 

Herbert West (The Rabbit Hole) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Skyshaper (Audio CD)

Following the stellar "Northern Light", Covenant speed up the bass drum yet again making a more dancy album like United States Of Mind. They still retain the beautiful, cold melodic sound that made Northern Light such a wonderful album. Ritual Noise is a great opener and very danceable, as is the rest of the songs on the album. Greater Than The Sun is a pretty dark track, with rumbling synth bass and Eskil's monotonous low vocals(he actually sounds kinda scary in this song). Happy Man is short and sweet with a nice melodic keyboard pattern. Anthems like 20HZ really make this album a winner. Totally worth repeated listens. The lyrics are pretty much of the same caliber. Some song have a only a few lines, like Sweet and Salty and Happy Man, others many. They still arent completely coherent, but hey thats Covenant. I always thought that Apoptygma Berzerk, VNV Nation, and Covenant ruled the EBM genre. But now Apop is really bland cheese-pop, leaving only VNV and Covenant to reign supreme. There are too many bands in the genre and its hard to listen to a lot of it cause its the same bass drum/distorted vocals/raver-esque synth lines over and over. Covenant add a very earthy, organic feel to their electronics and can actually convey emotions quite well through music otherwise meant for dancing. Skyshaper is just that: Beautiful emotional music that you can dance to. It is a very mature and "fun" album. Can't really say too much else because hearing is believing. But to the uninitiated, this is Covenant's best album, second only to Northern Light, which I think is their crowning achievement. I also recommend you get the Ritual Noise E.P. because it has two extra bonus tracks that were made for Skyshaper(The Island and XRd5) and they are great songs. That way you could burn a copy of Skyshaper for yourself with the bonus tracks and have a longer album? Either way, Covenant is the best band in the EBM electronic scene, always bringing something new to an otherwise repetative and uselss genre. Get this if you like melodic electronic music. It is a must have. Nuff said

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Skip the Limited Edition version of this album, April 5, 2006

By 

Richard (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Skyshaper (Audio CD)

***I'm reviewing the Limited Edition version that includes a bonus disc. Amazon.com, as of this writing, doesn't have it in stock yet and therefore no place for me to post this review, so I'm posting it here.***

"Skyshaper" took me a few listens to really get won over. It's a natural progression from "Northern Lights", with a touch of "United States Of Mind". It's a great album for Covenant fans, but I don't know if it'll win over any new ones.

The whole album is pretty solid, filled with mostly clubby dance tunes ("Ritual Noise", "Brave New World", "Pulse", "The Men", "Spindrift") along with a atmospheric, mid-tempo groover ("Greater Than The Sun"), a ballad ("The World Is Growing Loud") and a few that are out of Covenant's norm (the odd Moog driven "Happy Man", the harder-than-usual "Sweet & Salty").

"20 hz" is my favorite track, and could possibly be one of my favorite Covenant songs of all time. I could listen to it all day. I really love the raver synths at the beginning, then enters a rhythmic sample of someone struggling for breath as if to embody the struggle to survive in the Big City, as portrayed in the lyrics ("... people come and go, so many different faces, as the city passes by, I watch their tired eyes, journeys never made, broken dreams of leaving, fill the streets with dust...) Then the killer bass synth comes in, along with the 4/4 bass drum, and as soon as that snare drum starts hitting half way through the first verse, it's all over. Get down and boogie already. This song is worth the price of the CD alone.

The three song bonus disc, unfortunately, is fairly lame. The first song is an instrumental called "Subterfugue For 3 Absynths" . It's as pretentious as it sounds as it's 42 minutes of pretty much the exact same rhythm/synth line with only subtle variations. I can't even listen to it all of the way though, I made it about 10 minutes in before skipping around, finding out that it hardly changes, and then skipping it altogether. Either this is genius at work and I'm not seeing it or it is musical masturbation. Either way, I don't want to listen to it. The second track, "Relief", is a standard song with vocals and it's decent. The third track is a remix of "Ritual Noise", I like the album version better. Not too keen on most remixes anyway.

The packaging is great, a lot of black, white and grey colors are used in the design. The booklet features lyrics, photos of the band as well as landscape shots of Iceland. But what really does it for me are the liner notes for each and every song, as well as a foreword reflecting on the entire album. I loves me some inner thought. I'm not sure if this booklet is the same as the normal version.

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Join the Club..., March 24, 2006

By 

Tankery "Tankery" (New Orleans) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Skyshaper (Audio CD)

No question Covenant is the Depeche Mode/New Order of this new order of techno bands and SkyShaper doesn't disappoint. With one foot always on the dance floor and the other heavily into crafting a song, this is a great effort by the band.

I particularly enjoyed the constant references to travelling, either by car or train and this continual need to capture movement is executed brilliantly by this band. (Remember Helicopter off one of their older albums?)

They even loosen up a bit and sound remarkably like the Magnetic Fields on "Happy Man" with a bouncy, mid-tempo techno song that has Covenant sounding like I've never heard them before.

This is a band that is confident with their musical directions and with each album they expand further beyond the repetitive, overly programmed multitude of imitators in their genre.