Review by Saxy S for Green Carnation - Light of Day, Day of Darkness (2001)
It is ambitious, to say the least, when any artist decides to record a single, elongated song and release it as an album. Now these sorts of albums can end up in one of two places: the first is being so pretentious that it stuck up its own ass, and cannot bother to write anything decent to connect themes together, or perhaps they don't have any themes at all. The other is that the album is heralded as one of the genre's crowning achievements. Take a look at Edge of Sanity's Crimson, Sleep's Dopesmoker or Insomnium's Winter's Gate.
In each of those cases however, it was much later into the band's career. People do not remember that Crimson was Edge of Sanity's fifth studio album. Enter Green Carnation, who decided to give it a go on their second album! And what an album it is! This band placed themselves among elite company with this record, and will go down as one of the 2000s best heavy metal albums.
And to start, we have to talk about compositions. As I have discussed across many reviews, a long song can only work if it feels connected together by some kind of melodic hook or idea, and that transitions need to be fluent and not feel like a rapid change of pace. Green Carnation pull this off remarkably well with the exception of a couple of places. The riff that occurs around minute seventeen is a little choppy with it's change it tempo and pulse. Fortunately the transition back to the first riff is executed with more efficiency. There are other transitions that do not resonate as well with me, specifically at minute twenty-eight and thirty-one. As a side note, I feel like that whole section at minute twenty-eight is probably the weakest on the record, mostly in part because the strings and synths are mixed very poorly without a rhythm guitar. But outside of those brief moments, I think Light of Day, Day of Darkness has some spectacular transitions and melodic ideas that modulate between a number of different locations. Its brightest moment is in minute thirty-eight, where the acoustic guitar and saxophone play off each other from the previous section, before coming together for the electric guitar to take over, allowing the saxophone to rest.
Speaking of which, let's talk about them. While the term Progressive Metal may be the best way to describe an album like this, I do not think that is completely true. This album was released in the same year as Opeth's Blackwater Park and while their are certainly elements of that album on display here, most of this record feels quite comfortable in a doom/gothic metal groove. The tempos are slow, the grooves are deliberate, and the booming, low end of Kijetil Nordhus' vocals reminds me a lot of Peter Steele of Type O Negative. But when the album gets progressive, it has some truly stunning moments. The first is in minute thirty-two, when the vocals of Synne Soprana come in and play off the saxophone. The harmonies outlined in that section are downright gorgeous. I am also a big fan of the Middle Eastern touches that show up in minute fifty-two. I'm not sure this section would have worked nearly as well if it wasn't for minute thirty-two.
As for the production of this record, I do have some quibbles. The first and most blaring and occurrent is the electric guitars that sound a little too tinny for my taste. I wish the mixing of the guitars were a bit more resonant and authentic, rather than being held back to allow for other elements to be heard. At least it allows for some pretty cool bass grooves. The percussion is not all that impressive, but it never had to be. The vocals are very well done, especially Synne Soprana's vocals in minute thirty-two. The saxophone does sound a bit muffled in my opinion. Other than that, the only other real issue I had was in minute fifteen, when a high pitched chime persisted for about a minute or so and it was really off-putting.
But these are minors nitpicks on a truly marvelous record. Green Carnation took a major risk going for broke this early in their careers, and even though the production is questionable at times, there is no denying that these guys were master craftsmen when it came to songwriting. The record is very subtle but gets it's point across with precision. It's always darkest before the dawn and Light of Day, Day of Darkness represents that dawn to me.