Covenant

Covenant, UFO's fifteenth album, came out in July 2000: in Europe on Steamhammer, a division of SPV, in the United States on Mike Varney's Shrapnel Records, and in Japan on 21 July. Michael Schenker, who had left during the tour for Walk on Water, was back to record new songs with Phil Mogg and Pete Way, and the drummer was Aynsley Dunbar, a veteran of work with David Bowie, Jeff Beck and Journey. Varney produced the album together with the band. Ralph Patlan engineered and mixed it and took part in the mastering, and it was recorded at Prairie Sun Recording Studios and LCM Studios and mixed at Prairie Sun. Kevin Carlson played keyboards, and Jesse Bradman and Luis Maldonado sang backing vocals. Schenker and Mogg wrote nine of the eleven songs and Way and Mogg the other two, "Unraveled" and "Rise Again"; the album opens with "Love Is Forever" and ends with "The World and His Dog". The first pressing, in America and in Europe alike, was a two-CD set. Its second disc, Live USA, holds seven songs recorded in the United States on the 1995 tour that followed Walk on Water, with Simon Wright on drums and Paul Raymond on guitar and keyboards, and the limited Japanese two-CD set extends it with live recordings of "Shoot Shoot" and "C'mon Everybody". Covenant reached No. 53 on the German albums chart and No. 20 on the UK Official Rock & Metal Albums Chart. The tour that followed broke off before the end of 2000, and the band's concert at the Manchester Apollo on 24 November 2000 looked at the time as if it would be UFO's last.