Covenant

Beginning, as most bands do, as teenagers fiddling with instruments in their parents’ basement, the earliest incarnations of Covenant featured, six members. Over time the line-up trimmed down to a cast of three: vocalist and songwriter Eskil Simonsson, keyboardist and lyricist Joakim Montelius, and keyboardist Clas Nachmanson. Their first song written as the contemporary incarnation of Covenant was Replicant, a track which, Simonsson notes, was such a quantum leap forward for the band that he was certain it would be the last one he’d ever write. Little did he know, a deal with Swedish label Memento Materia and an entire album’s worth of material would soon follow.