by Ed Rivadavia

After some ill-advised dalliance with progressive rock and even (shock!) new wave, 1997's Covenant celebrated Holocaust's reconciliation with the musical style that had launched their career in the first place: heavy metal. God only knows what bandleader, and lone surviving founding member, John Mortimer had been thinking (or drinking) during the troubled outfit's recent blunders (capped by the all-time creative nadir that was Spirits Fly), but Covenant proved unequivocally that you can always go home again -- so long as you remember where the hell you came from! Refreshing everyone's memory banks in that regard, Covenant was, in fact,a full-fledged concept album whose tracks (including standouts "Leper's Progress," "Paradox" and "We Shall See Him as He Is") discussed religious topics while putting a modern spin on the group's riff-heavy New Wave of British Heavy Metal formula. To that end, they manage to retain the core attributes fans will recognize while proving that main man Mortimer's experimental streak of recent years hadn't been totally in vain -- so much as misguided. Cue the slow crawling "Return to Dust" which surely qualifies as a career high point as it unexpectedly builds from a very ho-hum beginning into a stunning collage of guitar textures and attendant acoustic melodies. Although still a few songs removed from a truly groundbreaking, must-own effort, Covenant indeed marked a very welcome return from the verge of oblivion for a band most considered a bunch of Scottish has-beens. Not bad!