LIGHT OF DAY, DAY OF DARKNESS

One year after releasing their eponymous debut GC went back to studio to record their second album consisting of one 60 min long track only. Both Botteri brothers have left the band meanwhile and actually Tchort as the band leader was the only one left over from the original line-up. But in fact he managed to gather a whole bunch of musicians and vocalists, amongst them 8 classically trained singers (male and female) and an entire children's choir next to 4 regular band members to help him realizing this magnum opus presented here. All music and lyrics of this concept song/album had been written solely by Tchort which deserves big acknowledge alone. What's the concept exactly about never became quite clear to me but according to the booklet he calls it his musical legacy, saying that it's musically dedicated to his son Damien Aleksander (who's as well participating as baby's voice) "for bringing joy, inspiration and meaning to my life" and lyrically dedicated to Christian and Christopher Botteri "on an everlasting mental and emotional journey". And I think the latter expression describes best this record - not really an everlasting, but an hour long inspiring and haunting trip through all kind of imaginations and emotions.

I won't describe the music presented here in detail because I think this has been done elsewhere often enough already and much better than I could do. In short this composition obviously is divided into three parts, first one lasts up to 32:50 when the female oriental sounding voice starts singing and the last one starts after that strange but impressive excursion around 39:00. And as much I've to say that this middle part was always my least favourite one and that it seams to be rather disturbing and out of place, it serves very well as a kind of control point for orientation. The first part is after a quite mellow intro alternating between heavy doom metal riffs and more lyrical sections. Vocals are mainly clean ones apart from a few screaming ones which are presented by Roger Rasmussen who has been put into duty especially for that job. There are as well some THERION-type male choirs and orchestral arrangements also typical for that band to be found here. But this is by far not the only obvious influence here, others are for example some kind of psychedelic doom metal as done by related band IN THE WOODS, undeniable there's as well a touch of PINK FLOYD present to name at least one seminal band. But overall GC manages here quite well to create their very own unique sound and though there's a main theme as a kind of thread being repeated in different variations throughout this track it never starts meandering and keeps the listener's attention at any moment. The second part sounds completely different from the rest and really marks a kind of break. In some way it's taking up a bit the dreamy atmosphere from the introduction for the first part and though it might sound quite inappropriate I'm sure it's more than just a filler. The elegiac, oriental sounding and extremely high-pitched voice combined with sax tunes has in a way a rather mesmerizing effect though for sure needs quite a lot of spins to get used to. After vocals have reached almost painful frequencies some tunes of acoustic guitar are leading over to the third part which is certainly the most versatile and prog-ish one. Starting from around 40:20 there's one of the absolute highlights of this disk - an awesome solo played first on acoustic guitar accompanied by some tender piano tunes and then continued on electric guitar. After a short slightly psychedelic and odd sounding section the music gets much more into a symphonic and orchestral but nonetheless heavy vein, the oriental-styled female vocals return for a short while and the composition reaches its climax. Then there's some mellow acoustic guitar, tasteful keyboard sounds and baby voice and one would expect that it's coming to its end before heavy guitars are returning for 1 or 2 minutes and a lullaby played on a musical clock is finally closing the disk.

As a summary I can't do other than calling this work an unique and exceptional one and giving it a full-score rating. This record is certainly to be considered a must-have in any metal-oriented prog collection!