Seattle, WA will always be remembered by people in the rock music fraternity as the birthplace of grunge and early progressive/power metal of which the former became a widely followed religion worldwide in the nineties while the latter sure enjoyed good success towards the end of the eighties. Little do they know that the city also spawned a devilish fiend and its name was Coven. Wicked, funny, diabolic, inhumane, perverted and demented are but a few terms that pretty much summed up the songwriting prowess. One look at the album cover of “Blessed is the black” and you could be sure this isn’t going to be conventional hard rock singing about love, compromises and family issues. While they did not break any new grounds musically as much of it could still be dubbed thrash with just a few leanings towards doom, power and even black metal, their lyrical content certainly raised a lot more eyebrows than what the band may have even expected themselves. Coven sure did release one stunner of a debut album with an absolute unrestrained approach. Before I got my hands on this record, I had heard a lot of good things about it if not convincing enough to give it a shot sometime. Upon playing the title track the first thing that caught my attention was the production and I thought to myself “For the year 1988, this production sounds as raw as an early eighties Venom or Bulldozer demo”. After the main riff which sounded quite captivating, the real show stealer stepped in and he’s the mave