Some bands return to relive a celebrated chapter from their past. The Kovenant have returned because that past unexpectedly opened the door to an entirely new future.
When I caught up with Nagash for Crannk, the immediate reason was historic enough. This September, The Kovenant will finally make their first journey to Australia, performing their landmark 1998 album Nexus Polaris in full across two exclusive shows in Melbourne and Sydney.
What began as a conversation about that cosmic black metal classic quickly became something much bigger.
The Australian performances will stretch beyond Nexus Polaris into a 90 plus minute journey through The Kovenant’s wider discography. More importantly, the chemistry that returned when Nagash, Hellhammer, Sverd and Sarah Jezebel Deva began playing together again has generated an almost completely written new album.
“We’re definitely back, we’re not going away,” Nagash told me. “We’re here to stay this time. For sure.”
Entering The Aussie Cosmos
Australia has waited more than three decades for The Kovenant. For Nagash, the September shows will also mark his first time setting foot in the country.
“I’m an Aussie virgin. I’ve never even been there before,” he laughed. “Everybody else has, not me. I’ve always been too terrified of going to Australia, so I’m looking forward to it.”
Presented by Soundworks Direct, the two shows will bring Nexus Polaris to Max Watt’s in Melbourne on September 18 and Crowbar Sydney on September 19.
Released under the band’s original Covenant name in 1998, Nexus Polaris took the darkness and aggression of Norwegian black metal and fired it into a far more expansive universe. Symphonic arrangements, polished production, cosmic imagery and neoclassical guitar work collided across an album that refused to remain inside any accepted genre boundary.
I was 18 when it arrived. I can still remember seeing that incredible cover artwork in the metal magazines of the time. Something about it immediately grabbed me, and when I went looking for the music behind that artwork, the album completely blew me away.
Nearly three decades later, Australia finally gets to enter that universe in a live setting.
Creating Black Metal
Music was never simply background noise for Nagash. His father was a successful Norwegian rock musician during the 1970s and 1980s, meaning festivals, concerts and life around working musicians were part of his world from almost the beginning.
After his mother later married another Norwegian heavy metal musician, that immersion became even deeper. Becoming a musician himself felt almost inevitable, although the self taught troublemaker was never heading towards a conventional musical education.
His own listening rapidly moved from Bon Jovi and Guns N’ Roses into Motörhead, Metallica and Megadeth, before heading deeper into the extreme metal underground.
Nagash and Blackheart began creating together while they were still incredibly young. Already ahead of their school music teachers, the pair were allowed to disappear into the back rooms and work with the available instruments. Those sessions helped shape the material that would become In Times Before The Light.
They originally believed they were attempting to play death metal. There was only one problem: as 13 and 14 year old musicians, they had not yet learned about down tuned guitars, and Nagash certainly did not sound like Cannibal Corpse vocalist Chris Barnes.
“Black metal came about as us failing miserably at doing death metal and mistakenly creating a new genre,” he said.
Across Norway, other young musicians appeared to be undergoing a similar transformation without necessarily knowing what was happening elsewhere. Bands were emerging with their own variations on an extreme new sound, creating one of the most significant movements in metal history.
Every Album Had To Become Something Different
Following the darker foundations of In Times Before The Light, The Kovenant could have repeated the formula. Instead, Nexus Polaris expanded into something symphonic, futuristic and cosmic.
That refusal to stand still would continue through the industrial and electronic mutation of Animatronic and the further evolution heard across S.E.T.I.
According to Nagash, every one of those transformations initially attracted resistance.
“Every album we ever released, we got so much shit for it, and then 20 years later the same people are going, ‘I love that album.’”
For Nagash, remaining true has never meant conforming to one narrowly defined sound. It means being true to yourself and creating whatever feels honest, regardless of how people may initially react.
That restless creativity is part of what has kept Scandinavian extreme metal alive. Rather than endlessly repeating the same record, its artists have regularly pulled inspiration from industrial music, punk, jazz, electronics and anything else that could help them push their music somewhere new.
The Kovenant have always belonged to that tradition of movement.
Australia Is Getting More Than Nexus Polaris
Although Nexus Polaris will be performed in full, Nagash confirmed that the Australian concerts will reach much further into the band’s history.
“I think we’re playing 90 plus minutes,” he revealed. “We’re playing music from all the albums, not just Nexus. We’re doing the whole discography.”
That means Australian audiences can expect the early black metal material alongside the later electronic, industrial and rock driven evolution of The Kovenant.
Recent Latin American audiences gave Nagash a clear indication of how powerful that complete journey can be. Fans who had previously dismissed Animatronic or S.E.T.I. came away from the live performances with a different understanding of those records.
Once stripped from the expectations surrounding their original releases and unleashed onstage, the later material revealed itself as every bit as heavy and extreme as the band’s earlier work.
For Australian fans, these shows will not only resurrect Nexus Polaris. They will present the many different creatures The Kovenant became after leaving that universe.
When A Reunion Became A Living Band
Nagash was initially hesitant about returning. His expectation was that The Kovenant might play a few shows and festivals before everyone returned to their separate lives.
Hellhammer helped convince him to commit, but once the musicians began playing together again, the old chemistry immediately returned.
“I thought, okay, let’s do a couple of shows, maybe some festivals, and that’s it,” Nagash explained. “But then we enjoyed playing together again so much, and we always clicked well together.”
The momentum escalated quickly. A handful of appearances became dozens of shows, while rehearsals began producing something nobody could ignore: new riffs.
The Kovenant were no longer simply rehearsing their history. They were instinctively creating again.
“Suddenly it just exploded very fast, kind of like in the early days,” Nagash said. “At rehearsal, we started playing new riffs to each other. Then suddenly it expanded, and now we have a whole new album, almost finished, written.”
Starting Again Instead Of Excavating The Past
Nagash and founding guitarist Blackheart, also known as Psy Coma, had completed material for an unreleased album around 2003. That music eventually disappeared without receiving an official release.
When The Kovenant returned, Nagash decided against simply excavating those recordings.
He explained that Blackheart could not participate in the resurrection because damage to his hearing had left him unable to listen to or perform music. With musicians from the Nexus Polaris period reconnecting and a different guitar partnership now in place, continuing with the old material no longer felt right.
Instead, the band chose to begin again.
Ghul, also known as Charles Hedger, and Arcturus guitarist Knut Magne Valle are both contributing to the writing, bringing their own personalities and influences into the music alongside Nagash and Sverd.
The result will not be Nexus Polaris Part Two, nor is it an attempt to recreate any other single period from The Kovenant’s history. Nagash describes it as a mixture of everything the band has been, expanded by musicians who have continued evolving during the long silence.
“It’s been a wild ride,” he said. “It’s like giggling like little girls at some of these riffs. Some of the songs are a mix between all the albums. It’s something new.”
Demos have already been played for people close to the band, and the reaction has been immediate: it sounds unmistakably like The Kovenant.
For Nagash, that response is both encouraging and amusing. The band has never needed to recreate an old album to retain its identity. The identity exists within the personalities creating it and their shared refusal to remain still.
The Kovenant Are Here To Stay
The Australian tour celebrates one of symphonic black metal’s defining albums, but it also arrives at the beginning of another era.
Nagash is finished with attempting to live an ordinary life away from music. He wants to keep writing, performing and creating for as long as he possibly can.
“I wanna go out like Lemmy, but preferably onstage,” he said. “At the age of 75 or 80 as well. Music for the rest of my life is what I want to do.”
That gives these Australian shows a very different energy.
This is not a final victory lap built around Nexus Polaris. It is Australia’s first encounter with a band that has rediscovered why it existed in the first place.
The cosmos have reopened, a new album is rapidly taking shape and The Kovenant have no intention of disappearing again.
The Kovenant Australian Tour 2026
Friday, September 18 — Max Watt’s, Melbourne
With Hybrid Nightmares and Nontinuum
Melbourne tickets through Oztix
Saturday, September 19 — Crowbar Sydney, Leichhardt
With Hybrid Nightmares and Destruction Of The Healer
Sydney tickets through Oztix
General admission and VIP meet and greet packages are available now. Visit Soundworks Direct for complete tour information.
