Green Carnation

Light of Day, Day of Darkness (The End)
by Martin Popoff

I don’t think I’ve ever felt so much excitement about watching a label mature, The End Records becoming quite quickly one of the prime purveyors of high quality dark metal, most of it ground-breaking, progressive, and well-recorded. Green Carnation is no exception, lead maestro Tchort having grown through an esteemed pedigree including Emperor and In The Woods. Light of Day is one continuous hour-long song, yet is somehow an effortless listen, a plush escape combining Amorphis, Floyd, folk, and the most frigid of Scandinavian dooms. Like an open and airy Opeth, as it were, wide-angled but quite boomy at the bottom end, oddly live-sounding, despite the Therion-painstaked details, which include 600 samples and 150 tracks of recording. Not as oddballed as Maudlin of the Well, Neurosis, or Solefald (for all its layers, you’re recurringly blanketed by those big auditorium drum beats) but certainly as important.
(556 S. Fair Oaks Ave. #101-111 Pasadena, CA 91105)