Korova

Among Austria’s most eclectic and risk-taking dark metal rings, Korova was formed in the town of Innsbruck by Christof Niederweiser (vocals, guitars, keyboards) in 1990, oddly taking their name from your Russian terms for “the cow.” After many years composing and rehearsing, Niederweiser drafted second guitarist George Razerberger, bassist Michael Kroll, and drummer Moritz Neuner ahead of documenting Korova’s debut recording, A Kiss in the Charnel Areas, released in 1995 by Napalm Information. It then required another four years before Niederweiser and Neuner came back with another album, Dead As an Angel, offering fresh bandmates Martina Hornbacher (vocals), Herwig Huber (acoustic guitar), Florian Oberlechner (bass), and Susanne Eckbauer (keyboards). This is the record that basically put Korova around the map, because of its awe-inspiring mixture of loss of life, dark, gothic, and intensifying metal, performed having a flair for grandiose theatrics. But it addittionally spelled the group’s end, when Niederweiser and Neuner inexplicably broke rates to discovered a seemingly unneeded, but obviously self-explanatory new task called Korovakill.