Album: "Book of Shadows" (1998)
Label: Akasi Records
Style: Goth
Songs: 13

Reviewed by: Darklight

Coven 13 is the goth rock duo of Teisen Russell (vocals) and Amanda Adams (piano). These two talented individuals bring a lot of passion and emotion into the songs delivered here. Teisen has a great voice and sings with a lot of range. Amanda is an excellent pianist giving an orchestrated edge to the songs. No other musicians are credited; so I’m not sure who performs the guitar, bass and drums.

Everything here is of a very high quality with each and every instrument layered to perfection. Teisen’s powerful singing flows along with the music tremendously. The songs are rather melodic featuring beauty and enchantment. This reflects on the duo being into magic and all things mystical.

While I would most likely catergorize this music as goth, I’m not really sure if that’s the right label for it. It has a dark beauty to it, but it’s light and enchanting as well. This isn’t really rock music, either. Even though it does have guitar, bass and drums-piano is the primary instrument creating the mesmerizing atmospheres.

The songs are mid-tempo never slowing down to a crawl. But they also never really rock hard and furious, either. There’s the right balance contained here that makes this music enjoyable to listen to without ever having you lose interest in it. It’s music that you can relax to, but won’t put you to sleep.

This CD features thirteen quality tracks of mesmerizing and enchanting music with a dark dramatic feel. I highly recommend it to those of you who like lighter more uplifting goth music.

Album: "Live"
Label: n/a
Style: Goth Rock
Songs: 5

Reviewed by: Darklight

The press release for this CD states that this Coven 13 recording is the harder newer edge of the band. They weren’t kidding...this music rocks. This is very unlike Coven 13’s previous melodic release “Book Of Shadows”. While I do like that CD, there’s no denying the fact that this new harder direction is great as well. The music is now energy driven by thrashing guitar, deep bass, slamming drum beats, frantic piano and raw shouted male vocals.

While this is live music, none of the five songs here are from Coven 13’s previous CD. So I would assume that these are all new songs that are going to be included on the next Coven 13 recording. I hope so, because these songs are powerful and emotional with a hard driving edge. Goth rock music fans should definitely pick this up.