Covenant’s ‘Northern Light’ turns 24 on 30 September
Ka2 Music released Covenant’s fifth album “Northern Light” on 30 September 2002. Jacob Hellner produced the 11 tracks, which turn 24 this year.
A Rammstein producer, a string section and a major label: Covenant made their fifth album under different conditions from the four before it. Ka2 Music, a division of Sony Music, released “Northern Light” in Europe on 30 September 2002, and Metropolis Records followed in the United States on 8 October 2002. The Swedish futurepop trio from Helsingborg had spent its previous albums on the independents Memento Materia, Off Beat and Dependent Records. The album turns 24 this year.
Jacob Hellner, who had produced Rammstein’s first three albums, produced “Northern Light” after pre-production by the band. Stefan Glaumann mixed “Call the Ships to Port”, “Bullet”, “Invisible & Silent” and “Prometheus”, Ulf Kruckenberg mixed the other seven tracks, and Björn Engelmann mastered. Axwell added programming, Ricard Nettermalm played live drums and Lizzie Zachrisson sang backing vocals on “Bullet”, “Scared” and “Atlas”. The Stockholm Session Orchestra, arranged and conducted by Joakim Milder, played the strings on “Invisible & Silent”, and Ulf Ivarsson played bass on “Atlas”. Joakim Montelius wrote the lyrics for seven tracks and Eskil Simonsson for five. “Rising Sun” carries a co-writing credit for American techno producer Steve Stoll and uses elements of his tracks “Reciproheat” and “Falling Down”.
The eleven tracks run 58 minutes and 39 seconds: “Monochrome”, “Call the Ships to Port”, “Bullet”, “Invisible & Silent”, “Prometheus”, “We Stand Alone”, “Rising Sun”, “Winter Comes”, “We Want Revolution”, “Scared” and “Atlas”. Ka2 issued the album as a standard CD, a limited digipak CD and a numbered gatefold double vinyl of 1,000 copies. The vinyl added four tracks not on the CD: club versions of “Bullet” and “Call the Ships to Port”, “Bullet (Funky Indian)” and “Don’t Go”. The Sony CDs carried copy protection and a label reading “Auf PC/Mac nicht abspielbar”, and early copies came with a sticker listing the “Northern Light” tour dates. Metropolis pressed its US edition as an HDCD.
Two singles bracketed the release. “Call the Ships to Port” came out on 12 August 2002 as a CD maxi with remixes by Oliver Klitzing, Christian Morgenstern, Kaylab and Thomas P. Heckmann, and reached number 93 on the German singles chart. “Bullet” followed on 9 December 2002 with an Ellen Allien “Flow Mix”, a Le Dust Sucker mix and the otherwise unreleased “Atom Heart”. A “Bullet” DVD with the video and making-of footage appeared in January 2003.
About Covenant
Eskil Simonsson, Joakim Montelius and Clas Nachmanson, three school friends from Helsingborg in southern Sweden, started making music together in 1986 after seeing Front 242’s first Scandinavian show, and took the name Covenant in 1988. They built a studio in Nachmanson’s bedroom while studying in Lund. Their first released track, “The Replicant”, appeared on a Memento Materia compilation in 1992, and the label issued the debut album “Dreams of a Cryotank” in December 1994.
Off Beat signed the trio in 1995 after a German festival appearance. “Sequencer” followed in May 1996, with the “Stalker” single and a tour alongside Haujobb and Steril later that year. San Francisco label 21st Circuitry handled the United States, where the “Theremin” EP appeared in 1997. “Europa” came out in April 1998. When Off Beat closed in 1999, Covenant moved to the newly formed Dependent Records in Germany and SubSpace Communications in Sweden, while Metropolis Records took over the American catalogue. “United States of Mind” appeared in February 2000, with the “Der Leiermann” single, and the live album “Synergy” followed in November 2000.
“Northern Light” moved the band to Sony’s Ka2 division in 2002. By then Montelius lived in Barcelona and Simonsson in Berlin, with Nachmanson still in Helsingborg. “Skyshaper” arrived in March 2006, and in March 2007 the band announced that Nachmanson would no longer tour, with Daniel Myer of Haujobb taking his place on stage. The tour film “In Transit” came out on DVD in October 2007 and confirmed Nachmanson’s departure. “Modern Ruin” followed in January 2011, the first album with Myer as a full member, and Daniel Jonasson joined the live line-up that year.
Andreas Catjar joined in 2013 on keyboards and guitar, playing on “Leaving Babylon” in September 2013 and on “The Blinding Dark”, released on 4 November 2016 after the “Sound Mirrors” single. Montelius told Side-Line at the time that the line-up had grown to five, and that “Covenant’s basic principle is to always evolve: change is the only constant.” The band handed out the “Fieldworks: Exkursion” EP on its German tour in February 2019 and released a cover of Yazoo’s “Winter Kills” in December 2020. Andreas Catjar-Danielsson died on 29 July 2024 after a long illness, and the charity “Andreas EP”, recorded with Simonsson, came out on Dependent Records on 17 October 2025. Twenty-four years after Ka2 pressed it, “Northern Light” remains the album that brought “Call the Ships to Port” and “Bullet” into the Covenant catalogue.
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Chief editor of Side-Line – which basically means I spend my days wading through a relentless flood of press releases from labels, artists, DJs, and zealous correspondents. My job? Strip out the promo nonsense, verify what’s actually real, and decide which stories make the cut and which get tossed into the digital void. Outside the news filter bubble, I’m all in for quality sushi and helping raise funds for Ukraine’s ongoing fight against the modern-day axis of evil. Besides music I’m also an SEO and AI content flow specialist and have an interest in everything finance from stocks to crypto. There is music in everything!
