On the cover of the first new recording from the Swedish electronic band Covenant in nearly a decade, there is an empty space where a person should be. It is a stark and poignant image, a deliberate absence in the frame that speaks more profoundly than any portrait could. This is the visual overture to ‘Andreas,’ an extended play record set for release on October 17, 2025.

This five-song collection functions not as a product, but as a pact—a communal act of remembrance and care uniting the band, their label, and their audience to honor a lost friend, Andreas Catjar-Danielsson, who died from cancer on July 29, 2024, at the age of 51.

Arriving via the German label Dependent Records, the project is a genuine act of support. All proceeds generated from the EP, across all platforms, will be directed to Catjar-Danielsson’s widow and their two children. In a gesture that reinforces the project’s deeply personal nature, the label has committed to waiving all of its own profits from the limited edition vinyl pressing. This arrangement strips the release of commercial pretense, reframing it as a pact between the artists, their record company, and their audience.

Yet, ‘Andreas’ is something more complex than a simple tribute. It is the completion of a final, posthumous collaboration. The recordings were not made merely about Catjar-Danielsson, but with him. He recorded, mixed, and performed on these tracks; the EP contains songs he co-wrote and cover versions he personally championed. The final mixing was a joint effort between him and Eskil Simonsson, one of the band’s founding vocalists.

This direct creative lineage makes his bandmates the stewards of his final artistic statements. They are not just remembering him; they are curating and presenting his last contributions, transforming the EP from a passive memorial into an active, final partnership. The artwork, then, does not mythologize an absence; it confronts the viewer with the unvarnished fact of it. This is not a shrine but a statement on the reality of loss—as unsentimental and profoundly human as the music Covenant has made for more than 30 years.

A Covenant Made in the Swedish Dark

Covenant’s sound and identity are products of the unique cultural soil from which they grew. The Swedish Covenant was formed in 1986 in the southern city of Helsingborg by a trio of teenagers: Eskil Simonsson, Joakim Montelius, and Clas Nachmanson. Their origin story is tinged with a specific European anxiety; the members attended a concert by the Belgian electronic pioneers Front 242 on the very night of the Chernobyl disaster. Inspired by that powerful experience, the trio held their first rehearsal as Covenant the following week, channeling the night’s anxious energy into creative action.

They emerged from a Swedish electronic scene uniquely suited for producing their brand of sound. There is a theory that the region’s long, dark winters and a melodic sensibility rooted in Nordic folk traditions create a predisposition for a certain kind of melancholic, introspective electronic music. This environment, coupled with domestic technological innovation and the support of foundational labels, fostered a generation of artists who perfected a unique paradox: music for the dancefloor that was simultaneously euphoric and deeply sad.

Over two decades, the founding trio remained intact before evolving. Clas Nachmanson amicably departed after the 2006 album ‘Skyshaper’ and was replaced by Daniel Myer of the German industrial band Haujobb. Around 2010, co-founder Joakim Montelius retired from touring to focus exclusively on his role as a studio member and lyricist, with his position on stage filled by keyboardist Daniel Jonasson in 2011. Andreas Catjar-Danielsson joined this evolving, transnational lineup in 2013. This transformation from a unified trio into a fluid collective, with members residing in different European cities, is key to their sustained sonic development.

‘Andreas’ and the Sound of a Long Silence

The arrival of ‘Andreas’ is made all the more significant by the long quiet that preceded it. It is Covenant’s first new issue since the 2016 album ‘The Blinding Dark,’ a nearly ten-year interval that has amplified the weight of this unexpected offering. The tracklist is not a collection of new compositions written in the wake of tragedy, but a carefully curated selection of Catjar-Danielsson’s work with the band, creating a miniature biography of his tenure.

The EP gathers his previous co-writing contributions, ‘Slowdance’ and ‘I Walk Slow’ from the ‘Leaving Babylon’ period, alongside the lengthy spoken-word piece ‘Das Nibelungenlied.’ This selection situates his creative input across the band’s recent history. But the EP’s emotional pillars are two cover songs, each re-contextualized by loss.

The opening track, a version of Lee Hazlewood’s ‘A Rider on a White Horse,’ first appeared on ‘The Blinding Dark.’ There, it was a stark, drone-laden curiosity. Here, it becomes a foreboding, gothic funereal centerpiece. The duet between Simonsson and Erica Li Lundqvist of Abu Nein now carries an unintended, prophetic weight.

The EP’s advance single, a rendition of Yazoo’s ‘Winter Kills,’ feels even more personal. It was a passion project for Catjar-Danielsson, who once described the original’s power. “‘Winter Kills’ is my all-time favourite YAZOO song. It is just magic,” he said, questioning, “How do you make something so minimalistic so bombastic? Like Eric Satie.”

His interpretation, helmed by him and featuring additional vocals from Andriana Seecker, is described as even gloomier than the source material, providing a direct connection to his artistic sensibility. Tellingly, the song was not accompanied by a traditional music video. Its release was marked only by simple audio streams, a conscious decision to avoid aestheticizing grief and to focus the listener’s attention solely on the sound itself.

Creating a Future from Pop and Machinery

In the late 1990s, the rigid framework of Electronic Body Music (EBM) had begun to feel creatively limiting. In response, a new hybrid sound emerged, pioneered by Covenant alongside the Irish-English project VNV Nation and Norway’s Apoptygma Berzerk. It fused the hard, danceable pulse of EBM with the melodic songcraft of synth-pop and the atmospheric, uplifting textures of trance. Ronan Harris of VNV Nation, in conversation with Apoptygma Berzerk’s Stephan Groth, coined a name for it: futurepop.

The term was born from dual motivations. Artistically, it was a deliberate act of revitalization, re-injecting emotional vulnerability into a scene that was becoming a creative dead end. But it was also a pragmatic choice, a label designed to make the music more palatable to radio programmers wary of the terms “EBM” or “goth.”

Covenant’s albums from this period cemented their status as architects of the genre. ‘United States of Mind’ (2000) smoothed out their harsher edges in favor of what one review called “suave melodies driven by vivace electro-beats,” producing timeless anthems like ‘Like Tears in Rain’ and the ubiquitous club hit ‘Dead Stars.’

Their 2002 album, ‘Northern Light,’ is arguably their apex. Produced by Jacob Hellner, known for his work with Rammstein, the album was a work of immense polish and confidence. It yielded some of their most iconic songs, including ‘Bullet’ and the grand, sweeping ‘Call the Ships to Port,’ representing a perfect balance of intellectual depth and kinetic energy.

Conclusion

In the autumn of 2025, Covenant will take to the road again, with performances scheduled across Europe. This tour is not a promotional circuit for a new product, but a public ritual. It transforms the concert hall into a space for shared remembrance, redefining the relationship between the band and its audience. The fans, many of whom have followed the band for decades, become active participants in a collective act of mourning and celebration.

The release of ‘Andreas’ serves as a necessary coda. After a long period of public silence and private struggle, the band had to honor their friend and close the book on his contributions before they could move forward.

The EP is an emotional and artistic clearing of the decks, a cathartic act that, once completed, will free them to explore what Covenant is, and what it sounds like, in the next phase of their career. The name they chose as teenagers—Covenant—has accrued a new, heavier meaning over four decades.

This record and the tour that will follow are the ultimate fulfillment of that sacred bond: a promise kept to a fallen friend, to the music they made, and to the band itself.