Covenant is the third official full-length album by Florida-based death metal band Morbid Angel. It was released on June 22, 1993, through Earache Records in Europe and Giant Records in North America. Covenant was the band's breakthrough album due to their contract with Giant Records and its widespread exposure on MTV's Headbangers Ball, as well as the music video for 'God of Emptiness' appearing on Beavis and Butt-head. It is frequently described as one of the greatest death metal albums of all time, and a landmark album in the genre, influencing countless future metal bands, including Portal and Dead Congregation. According to Nielsen Soundscan, Covenant was the best selling death metal album as of 2003, with sales of over 150,000 in the United States alone. In 2017, Rolling Stone named it the 75th best metal album of all time.
Background
In the late 80s, a number of heavy metal and thrash metal bands such as Metallica, Slayer, Anthrax, and Megadeth enjoyed significant mainstream success, while "Iron Maiden went heavy on synths" and "Testament actually wrote a song called 'The Ballad'". In music journalist Michael Nelson's interpretation, there was a growing feeling that "the scene was getting co-opted, going soft, cashing in." By the early to mid 90s, thrash metal had largely given way to death metal as it continued to push the limits of extreme metal, while its mainstream acceptability grew partly due to the collaboration between Earache and Columbia Records. Covenant's release through Earache and Giant Records therefore represented one of the most significant releases of that time period, and 1993 is widely credited as one of death metal's highest peaks. Morbid Angel's success with their previous two albums gained them a one-album record deal (with the option of five more) with Giant Records (a subsidiary of Warner Bros. Records) in the Spring of 1992. Later that same year, second guitarist Richard Brunelle was kicked out of the band due to alleged substance abuse, meaning that Covenant was recorded as just a trio.
Musical style, writing, and composition
The album's lyrics, written by David Vincent, draw heavily on occult, mythological, and Satanic themes, including theistic Satanism, Sumerian religion, and Nietzschean philosophy. Michael Nelson wrote that part of the success of the album is due to the band's success at reflecting these themes musically, particularly due to Trey Azagthoth's guitarwork. Michael Nelson, writing for Stereogum on the album's 20th anniversary, described Azagthoth's work: "His guitars seemed to mimic surreal horrors of nature — whirlpools or wildfires — more than they did any musicians of his era. At the time, the most celebrated guitarist in death metal was Chuck Schuldiner of Death, a dazzlingly proficient hyper-shredder with few technical equals. Azagthoth, on the other hand, delivered queasy, nitrous leads that called to mind the most extreme work of free-jazz/grindcore saxophonist John Zorn." An entry on AllMusic explains that "Guitarist Trey Azagthoth plays complicated, heavily detuned riffs, some with a lightning-fast picking style and others in a slower groove. Drummer Pete Sandoval is one of the genre's fastest, and his jackhammer style helps complete Morbid Angel's core sound." The album also serves as a rejection of many mainstream musical conventions, and, Nelson of Stereogrum also describes, "is never a catchy record. That’s partly because the album is essentially devoid of anything resembling a traditional 'chorus,' but it’s mostly due to the uppermost layers of sound — the things on which the ear and imagination immediately focus. Covenant squeals and reels wildly; the band’s odd and ever-changing time signatures leave little room for grooves."