Green Carnation - The Acoustic Verses

Album Review + Download

Date of Release: January 2006
Country: Sweden
Genre: Folk Rock/Acoustic Prog-Rock

Background Information: Green Carnation is a group which draw my attention a year ago, in quite an interesting way; It's members are known people in the metal and black metal scene of Norway, and it's founding member and writer of most of the music is an ex-Emperor member. Initially, the band played doom/death metal, but as it progressed, now it plays some form of progressive rock with metal tendencies. But their latest album was a complete turn from what they've even done before: a completely acoustic album which carries the name: "The Acoustic Verses".

Review: The album starts with the sweet song titled 'Sweet Leaf', a folk rock song which progresses normatively. Then you'll find 'The Burden Is Mine... Alone' which presents a beautiful, simple singer-songwriter styled song which only includes acoustic guitar and singing. Sordal's voice is very soft and stroking on most of this album, he's clean and sometimes backuped by backing vocals, and even reminiscent of Camel's Andrew Latimer singing - thoughtful and deep, yet peaceful.
The album's epic song '9-29-045' (Yes, that's the song title), is a long (over 15 minutes), contemplative, laid-back song which progresses through three parts: first and third are regular tempo and full, containing vocals, and the middle part is somekind of a quiet, delirious, instrumental interlude.
One song that caught my attention was 'Childs Play Part 3', a short instrumental piece which only contain some moog/guitar sounding instrument playing something that sounds very classical, while being sad and bitter. 'High Tide Waves' is another epic song, a lot shorter than the first one. It combines gentle guitar playing and a powerful 'chorus' with drums and powerful vocals, which somewhat reminded me Ian Gillan of Deep Purple. And what I enjoyed most in this song, was this Opeth sounding clean electric guitar solo in the last minutes of the song.
The remaining two songs, 'Alone' and 'Maybe?', didn't caught my attention so much - Alone is a very folky song which of you might like, and Maybe? is much more darker, yet I find it boring a bit.
Now, after I'm done telling you about every single song, I will try to describe the album as a whole. Well, it is certainly interesting. Not very unique, but still original. It draws much influence from old 70's prog rock such as Camel and Deep Purple - as well as from the indie/folk rock rock scene too - bands such as Radiohead, Coldplay and Sigur Ros have large influence on this album, and don't argue me about that. And why is it so interesting? Well, mostly because of the fact that the songwriter for this album is no other than the former bassist for Emperor, the uncompromised, primitive influential black metal band. It is really interesting to see what's on that guy's mind except for blast beats and burned guitar amps. So yes, basically it's a folk rock album - but the thinking and the writing is different - it came out of a metalhead's mind.

Score: 8.5 out of 10. It is an interesting album, very peaceful and laid back, atmospheric. The only problem is that it's a little repetitive and monotonous.

Track Listing:

1. "Sweet Leaf" – 4:38
2. "The Burden is Mine... Alone" – 3:15
3. "Maybe?" – 5:02
4. "Alone" – 3:43
5. "9-29-045" – 15:29
6. "Childs Play Part 3" – 3:32
7. "High Tide Waves" – 7:49

Total Length: 43:32

Here is a DOWNLOAD LINK for the album.