LIGHT OF DAY, DAY OF DARKNESS

This is the kind of album that suspiciously sounds as if it was written for me. Green Carnation has the majestic melodious doom metal sound of The Gathering's Mandylion mixed with the quiet and spacey atmosphere from Anathema's Judgement. Both bands with a strong Pink Floyd flavour in the sound, and so does Green Carnation. Unfortunately, there are a couple of things that reduce the enjoyment.

The album brings one continuous 60 minute piece of music and the band has been very successful at making it flow very smoothly and spontaneously. At no point does it sound gimmicky like Mike Oldfield's Amarok for instance. There are some parts where the music plods along a bit but I'm a doom metal enthusiast so that's no issue for me, I'm used to worse plodding then this!

The music is solid throughout but lacks true highpoints, moments of splendour, crescendos that build up a tension and release it with a devastating blow. Everything stays too much at a same volume, pace and intensity. There's no 'wow'-moment at any point. Only the guitar solo around 42 minutes gives a try. Another thing that bothers is that the chorus is repeated too much in the first half. The vocals are warm and melodic but are totally lacking in dynamics as well.

There's one more issue with this album and it's the female vocals halfway in. Who gave this poor woman the idea to sing higher then she possibly could? She's miles off her high notes. The effect is very amateur and grating at best. It's probably an attempt to sound like Dead Can Dance but it's a sad failure. This vocalist is no Lisa Gerrard and certainly no Diamanda Galas, who would have ripped this section apart! Besides, the melodies are very unremarkable. Worst of all, this whole album is mastered as one track so you can't even skip this part. Ripping to mp3 and cutting it up seems to be the only solution to avoid this.

Light Of Day might be an attractive album to try modern metal because it has no gruff vocals, but it is misses the dynamics and imagination to reach true greatness. It's a solid 3 stars album and it could maybe have been 4, but the hysterical female vocals in the middle simply shatter one star to bits.