The Kovenant – Animatronic (1999)
It might have cybergoth written all over it, but this album is the fucking shit. Imagine if Dimmu Borgir decided to start making music like KMFDM or something. Animatronic is a bright, sparkly journey through what should by rights be a dark and mysterious world. The songs are keyboard or female-vocal led, beefed out with chuggy riffage and a combination of programmed beats and heavy drumming. Eagled-eared listeners (is that a thing? It is now!) will recognise the opening track, “Mirror’s Paradise”, from Bam Margera’s infamous CKY videos. The magic in this album though, has gotta be the production job. If this thing was mixed in any other way, it would probably fail catastrophically. The keyboards and electronic sounds really are the driving force here, and if they got buried under the metal and the screechy vocals, the whole thing would fall on it’s arse, like when Martin Foul left Cradle Of Filth; it took you a few tracks to realise that something was missing, and when you finally figured it out, everything sounded empty and boring. I genuinely believe that there isn’t a bad song on this album. I can’t exactly do repeat listens, because the whole goth thing grates on me after a bit, but every now and then I come back to this album and love every second of it, before compartmentalising it again for another random period of time. My favourite tracks are the well-known opener, “Mirror’s Paradise”, the brooding “Mannequin”, the pacy “Human Abstract” (which a really crummy band is named after) and the highlarious cover of Babylon Zoo’s “Spaceman”. Dust off the cyberlocks and glowsticks, it’s time to dance and then take too much heroin and vomit on your Ministry t-shirt. Yay goths!
