Band:	Green Carnation
Album:	Light Of Day, Day Of Darkness
Style:	Gothic metal, Progressive metal
Release date:	November 2001
Guest review by:	Bas

01. Light Of Day, Day Of Darkness

It is quite some time ago since the last time I was so fascinated by a single song. In this case, it's a single song and a whole album at the same time. Light Of Day, Day Of Darkness is an epic 60-minutes long progressive doom metal masterpiece.

I have never before experienced a song that awakened so many emotions in me at the same time. Hope and despair, pleasure and pain, life and death, knowledge and incomprehesion become one on this CD. Letting the listener experience all at once. With sometimes melancholic, sometimes hopeful singing the listener is led from stanzas like "For it was my dream, To create a perfect world, From this cold imperfect world, And all the answers were inside my mind" to others like "What is left to say? What is left to see? Where did I fail?" Lyrically the whole song is nothing less then a rhetoric masterpiece.

While listening to this CD you will often find yourself drifting off, lulled by the gentle and tranquil instrumental sections, only to be violently torn into reality again by the fast and furious attacks on the drumkit. The keyboard, although used sparingly and always very slow when used, brings up alot of emotions. The riffs are usually midtempo and very pressing. The drumming varies between very slow and very fast. Apart from the great lyrics the thing that impressed me most though were the vocals. Some great variation and even greater emotions.

The female vocals aren't used until the thirty-third minute, where a long part with only saxophone and a female voice starts. The voice only makes sounds, not words, and varies alot until it reaches a musical climax. After that the saxophone continues until the thirty-seventh minute, with the female voice only singing very short after various intervals. Near the end of the cd, after a weird electronic sounding part of the male vocalist, the female vocalist joins in again. When there are only three and a half of the 60 minutes left you can hear a laughing child, symbolizing rebirth. The CD ends with a child's melody and the audible turning of the off-switch.

After listening to this CD I am always filled with thoughts, thoughts of hope, of happiness, of love, of tenderness and at the same time with opposing feelings, despair, sadness, melancholy, helplessness. I have never before heard an album or a song that was able to do this to me.

So please give this masterpiece a try, you won't regret it.