Review by Rexorcist for Green Carnation - Journey to the End of the Night (2000)

Green Carnation, a prog band formed by ex-Emperor bassist Tchort, is a band I've put off for a long time so I can focus on other kinds of metal and other genres in general, but I finally have the freedom to check out one of the three bands I need left for one of the Metal Academy prog metal list challenges.  Even though I only need to review one of their albums, I wanted to go back to the beginning, as I believe a real student should expand further than just one album per band as the lists are exclusively formed.

So starting with the debut, I was quickly introduced to a psychedelic atmosphere that I had never heard before.  The thirteen minute opener, In the Realm of the Midnight Sun, was an obvious effort in putting together various styles in a way that fit and could justify the length of 13 minutes.  Now I'd say as far as progressing the various genres in one song goes, there wasn't any problem with that.  But there's something that really needs to be addressed: some of the rhythms outshine other parts of the song by country miles, so the song still feels inconsistent in that way.  I thought to myself, "I supposed that's where the leading criticism comes from?"  I had other epics to check out before I could be certain of that.  Another product of the inconsistency is how some metal moments are much heavier than others.  I suppose the drums were improperly mixed, feeling a little faint for what they were striving to achieve.  But by the third epic, which totals tracks 2-4 into 45 minutes, it kind of becomes a cycle of reused tricks in different epics, creating a sense of overlength.  Even the fact that several shorter songs take up the end doesn't really detract from this.

For a first attempt, there's some good genre balance and ambition here, but the lack of original rhythmic ideas tells me that this was merely the band tackling too much at once and only fairly succeeding more at the intrigue rather than the music.  It's a fine first attempt in that way, but more or less decent in other ways.