Green Carnation - Light of Day, Day of Darkness

it was quite excellent back then and i bet id like it now possibly even more. fans of that album must check out later In the Woods (Omnio) if they havent done so.

i didnt mind the female vocals too much
Agreed. Omnio is pretty much the only one metal album where I can stand female vocals.

PS: + Elend
 
The passage at the 42 min mark of this monumental album is sheer bliss to my ears. :worship:

Since this thread, my appreciation towards this disc has amplified ten fold.
 
Given all the discussion recently, I went back and threw this on last night for the first time in a long, long while. So glad I did, this is such a great release. I feared my time away from it would tarnish the memory as my tastes continue to evolve, but quite the opposite turned out to be true and my appreciation grew even stronger. :kickass:

Jason
 
The last 20 minutes of this album may be the greatest achievement in music history.

That's funny...whenever I think about this album and try to visualize it as a single song, I always see the first 40 minutes as "the song", and the last 20 minutes is "just the ending". Of course, that's because I'm stupid, and when I actually listen to those last 20 minutes, there is so much great stuff in in there, but I think when I'm listening to it straight through, my brain-buffer fills up at 40 minutes, so I can't grasp the entire thing in a single view. So the part I can't see just gets categorized as "some random extra stuff".

I've always meant to draw some sort of diagram of the song to help me visualize it better. "Intro Buildup", "Jan K. Transeth Prelude", "Verse 1", etc.

Because the first 32 minutes really seem to be quite solidly structured, essentially two variations on a 16-minute theme, each one ending with the song's "chorus":

I Fell
Asleep
To sweet
Lullaby
A Sleep. In which. I had. A Dream.
In this dream I conceived a perfect plan!
That would. Change the. Face of. Mankind.
For it. Was my. Dream to. Cre-a-ate...
The Perfect World from this Cold Imperfect World!

Then after Chorus #2, everything dies, and we enter Wailing Woman World, where we spend 10 minutes in the dark slowly crawling back upwards until we reach that great 2-minute guitar solo the finally restores us fully to life again. Then after that, it seems like "well, I've come this far, and we might as well make this thing 60 minutes long, so let me just throw a bunch of other ideas in here".

Neil
 
Neil, that was my sentiment up to two weeks ago. I suggest throwing on this disc periodically to catch that special moment where your mind coalesces it all together. I used to think that this part http://media.theendrecords.com/GreenCarnation_LightOfDayDayOfDarkness_single.mp3

was the slice of roast to the song, and every thing else was simply garnishing. I would often catch myself drifting away from the stereo after Synne Soprana's drawn out wailing of orgasmic discomfort. Many a times this drawn out passage would serve as an anti-climatic taper that lulled my senses towards a state of indifference. "Nothing more to hear here." The last twenty minutes would come off as not sounding very attuned to the preceding 40 minutes of composition. But today, it all comes together so effortlessly. It's a tour de force. :kickass:
 
The last 20 minutes of this album may be the greatest achievement in music history.


Specifically around the 46 min mark. :worship:

The riffing that I'm talking about actually begins precisely at 48:22. Right after...

I heard the tales
I learned the secret way
That tears are replacements
For what has been taken away
From us and what we`ve lost
Still, all I see is burning fields
Still, all I hear is dying screams


:worship:
 
Neil, that was my sentiment up to two weeks ago.

Awesome. It seems like we were at exactly the same point then. It's hard to comprehend how I could like this song even more than I already do, but I'm certainly willing to try to find out how that might feel!

Whoever made the clip of that "single" definitely knew what they were doing though, that was exactly what I was talking about with the 'structure', or as you say, 'composition'. It hits the major themes and definitely feels like the meat of the song.

But yeah, I remember at Day of the Equinox, after traveling to Toronto, after seeing bands for hours (including Woods of Ypres, Novembers Doom, and Agalloch!), after an hour of regular Green Carnation songs, and after an hour of "Light of Day...", at 2AM they hit that final explosion of "metal" (57:15 on the album), and I reached a mental state that I've never felt before or since. If I can come close to recreating that, that'd be, well, pretty cool.

Whoa, this might be the most successful thread I've ever started.

heh...that's kind of like taking credit for getting a lot of views for a post titled "HOT NAKED BOOBS IN HERE!" In other words, it's not you. :D But still, good job!

Neil
 
I bought this record when it came out, but was never truly impressed by it. I'd be surprised if I listened to it in its entirety more than three or four times. Still, I was curious to see how it would come across live when it was announced the band would be performing it in its entirety at PP. To say I was floored would be a vast understatement. In truth, it may be the finest 60 minutes of live music I've ever witnessed. Amazingly, this wasn't simply my impression. Everyone, from power metal faithful to the prog metal purists felt similarly. I can't even count the number of people who walked away saying it was the best live performance they've ever witnessed. It was one of those perfect live experiences, where metal, art and a bit of magic seem to intersect and create something akin to a religious experience.