JOURNEY TO THE END OF THE NIGHT

My first GREEN CARNATION. Very good doom/dark prog metal. Very different regarding to the more recent albums. All time we have a melancholic but sonically stunning atmosphere. Female vocals plus guitar riffs (sometimes remember Black Sabbath) are amazing. Male vocals are not so good, at least for me, but they work. Good guitar effects and riffs. In several moments the drums is variable, progressive like and fortunately do not remembers the repetitive drums so common in a lot of metal bands. Some long instrumental work. At least for my Brazilian cd the sound appears to be a little below standard equalization. I have discovered GREEN CARNATION and IN THE WOODS music just 20 days ago in this stunning site, and I recommend to all at least a listen to this stuff.

This is the first Green Carnation album born from the remanents of In the Woods, another iconic Scandinavian dark metal band. In fact, JttEotN sounds like a logical extension of In the Woods album Omino. The songs are long, almost jam oriented, somewhat symphonic, and feature a mixture of male and female vocalists. The female vocals are more operatic in nature and shouldn't be mistaken as similar to other Scandinavian bands using female vocals like White Willow and Paatos. And by dark metal, I mean in tone. The feeling in the music is melancholic and depressing; similar to Evergrey but not as heavy or as fast.

Given that Green Carnation have changed styles a lot between this debut and their more current output, the music on this album serves as a stepping stone to the incredible Light of Day, Day of Darkness concept album. If you like Light of Day, Day of Darkness, then you should pick this album up as well because it is very similar in most respects.

The only thing that takes away from this album is that the production quality isn't as good as it should have been. The bass is kind of muddy and undefined while at the same time it is mixed a little too high. It'll sound a little weird on a high quality stereo with good subs, especially when compared to the mix on Light of Day, Day of Darkness. All in all, this is a good album and a worthy listen as it doesn't disappoint or fail to deliver the prog-metal goods.

Though this album was released in the year 2000, Green Carnation were formed in 1990 by guitarists Tchort and X. Botteri, bassist Christopher Botteri and drummer Anders Kobro, the band recorded the Hallucinations Of Despair demo before Tchort departed to fill the vacant bass position in Emperor, while the remaining members took on a new singer and became In The Woods...In 1998, Tchort and the Botteri brothers regrouped to pursue their original vision. Along with vocalist RX Draumtanzer and new drummer Alf T. Leangel, Green Carnation was revised and recorded Journey To The End Of The Night.

Musically, Green Carnation come across as a doomier and less enthralling In The Woods.... Of course, the fact that this music contains sounds that are being made by the Botteri brothers and appearances are made by female vocalist Synne Soprana makes it just a little difficult to not think of In The Woods... while listening to this album. There is a similar experimentation factor at play here. The songs are quite lengthy, weaving in and out of doomy metal excursions and airy atmospheric passages, while even dabbling in a similar dark psychedelia at times. Green Carnation's compositions act more as dark mini-journeys than songs, recalling at times the ITW... masterwork Omnio. But these similarities, while justified by the presence of certain musicians involved, are only in structure, not in feel. Where In The Woods... wrote dark journeys (that did, in fact, also act as songs) that were captivating and emotionally enveloping, Green Carnation's works often befall to aimless meandering and soulless performances and ideas. While it can certainly be argued that this album takes more than a few thoroughly attentive listens before the scope of its entirety starts to make its impact, the same can be said of the classic In The Woods... works. The bottom line is that Green Carnation are just not as engaging, musically or emotionally. It's easy to tune this album out at times, and I don't think that these tracks were constructed with that effect in mind.

As for individual performances, the Botteri brothers are, as always, phenomenal. Christopher's bass playing is always more than just the typical pulsating under-current employed by most bands of this nature, as he works in tandem with brother X in creating dark, introspective atmospheres that build to metallic climaxes. Together, they possess an approach and technique that is truly unique. Tchort's riffing is not quite as intriguing, but adequate enough for the material. His vision for this album and for Green Carnation itself, although not yet fully developed, is of more credit than his actual instrumental individuality. Drums are handled well enough by Leangel. Nothing spectacular, but he gets the job done. The vocal performances are where I have a problem, however. The lead male vocals by Draumtanzer are, at times, flat and annoying. In some sections his delivery is decent enough, but I would not have minded much if there were much less of his voice on this recording. The same goes for the female performances as well. Though delivered convincingly during particular moments (notably by the talented Soprana and Vibeke Stene of Tristania), they are just all over these tracks, sometimes ruining an otherwise pleasant atmosphere. I'd like to hear this album as an instrumental effort as something tells me that it would work better without the female vocal overload and the lifeless male vocals. However, it should be mentioned that the vocal performances were improvised in the studio with the contributors having little time to learn the material.

Journey To The End Of The Night is dedicated by Tchort to his deceased daughter, and it's the unfortunate event of her untimely passing that forms the concept of the album. Undoubtedly a weighty project for Tchort, the album succeeds on most levels aside from the vocal shortcomings and the sometimes wayward arrangements. It's easy to get lost in the cumbersome structures, yet the listener can use this to his/her advantage by not approaching the album in terms of individual tracks. Taken as a whole, it can be effective when acting as a journey through doomy soundscapes or simply as background music for whatever task is at hand. All in all a promising, if directionless, first effort from a band that surely will create even more interesting music in the future.

Let me tell beforehand a few historical facts being quite essential IMO for full acknowledge of this excellent album. In 1998 guitarist Terje Vik Schei (aka Tchort) after having played in death metal bands like Emperor and Satyricon for a couple of years joined forces once again with the Botteri brothers and Anders Kobro who released together quite a few great albums between 1995 and 1999 under the name IN THE WOODS. to record finally GC's debut (8 years after formation of this band). However during recording some problems occurred since their first two vocalists had to cancel studio duties. Finally the band managed to find 5 new completely different vocalists, Vibeke Stene, Atle Dorum, Geir Sollid (aka RX Draumtanzer), Synne Soprana and Linn Solaas who helped finishing the recordings in July 1999 very successfully completely relying on improvisation and talent. The album finally saw its release in late 2000 on the Prophecy Productions label. And the result was really more than remarkable and could be roughly described as a kind of psychedelic rock (due to the input of Christian "X" and Christoffer Michael "CM" Botteri who were the important minds behind the music of ITW) with a strong influence of doom/death metal brought in by Tchort. Latter one (who has been all the time the important mind behind GC's music in return) wrote as well all the lyrics for this album and dedicated it to his daughter who tragically died just before. I think taking into account all those facts it's not that much surprising that this album got such an extremely dark sound and reveals quite an obvious similarity to ITW's "Omnio"-album just with a more metallic sound.

As said already the music on here sounds extremely morbid and sorrowful on the one hand but as well very often majestic, even pompous at times and throughout spine-chilling on the other hand. Thus people who need their Prog to be mawkish, cheer- and delightful will hardly get pleased by this record. But even for those fellows (like me) preferring "the dark side of Prog" this isn't easy stuff at all and though being, besides their second masterly album my favourite one by GC right from the beginning the compositions on here are hard to memorize after listening. Track lengths of 10, 15 or even 18 minutes are a strong hint that it's definitely Prog we're dealing here with. Moreover rather lengthy introductory sequences of atmospheric synths sounds and the climactic structure of the mostly slow-paced doomy tracks will certainly appeal rather to the more intense and advanced listener than to the common impatient one. Though being deeply rooted in doom metal and despite their length the tracks don't sound repetitive or minimalist like it's usually the case in that particular sub-genre. Each one of the five vocalists is doing his/her job very well and there are as well quite a few sections with wordless vocals emphasizing well the moony and disembodied atmosphere of this album. Especially Synne Soprana, known already from "Omnio" shines as well here with her voice. But despite all celestial and beautiful female voices (there are in fact 3 different ones of them) nicely contrasted by two male apocalyptical sounding ones this record never comes close to any standard gothic metal band's ones at any moment but instead represents a highly unique work in the field of dark progressive metal. It's very difficult to name any highlights since all tracks are just awesome and build on each other within the concept of this album.

Unfortunately GC's debut will always stand a bit in the shadow of its terrific follow-up but actually I don't see (or better hear) no reason for that. Rather would I consider "Journey To The End Of The Night" one of the best debut albums ever done by a band and certainly an excellent collector's addition for any fan of dark and heavy progressive music.

The unplanned difficulties that led up to the recording of this album are fairly evident in the rather improvisational nature of much of the music. In many ways though this is a more progressive record than some of the later Green Carnation albums, which tend to be both more subdued and sound more polished (not necessarily a good thing, especially with ‘The Acoustic Verses’ that sounds like it underwent too many studio mixing sessions in my opinion).

This album has a rawer feel to it, particularly on the very long tracks such as “In The Realm of the Midnight Sun” and “Under Eternal Stars” which sound at times like death metal jam sessions. The various female vocals, seemingly ever-present in most Nordic metal, are always a welcome additional and give the music an even more majestic tone.

One complaint is the weak production quality compared to the later Green Carnation albums. This may sound like a contradiction after saying that those records sound too polished, but in this case it isn’t just a matter of the music not being heavily engineered – it’s really more that the sound quality is a bit rough in places, and particularly with the lead guitar which seems to suffer from a little more feedback and over-amplification than is necessary. This is in contrast to the drums which are exceptionally miked and sound great.

The other minor quibble is with the male vocals, which aren’t bad but are undistinguished. The lyrics are impossible to follow, which would be understandable if this were a growling album or something, but it isn’t so the seemingly intentional muddling of the vocals doesn’t seem to serve much purpose and detracts a bit from the overall experience. The female vocals are the other hand are crisp, clear and beautiful, especially on “Journey to the End of Night (Part I)” – the moody, eerie passage toward the end of this track is one of the album’s highlights.

The closing trio of song snippets are a bit disjointed, but I like the heavy tempo and majestic feel to all of them, especially the soaring closing track “Shattered”. This one is actually too short and could have made for a much stronger closing with an extended instrumental passage and maybe a heavy crescendo or two. Oh well.

All things considered this album should be seen as a positive sign of things to come for the band, and since I first heard this after listening to ‘Light of Day, Day of Darkness’ it makes the genesis of that album make a bit more sense. By the time the band put out 'The Quiet Offspring' they had really perfected the sound that began to grow here.

This isn’t the band’s best work, but it’s not bad either. A solid three star effort for sure, and likely to be considered quite good by metal aficionados and even post-rock fans who like a little metal in their music. Recommended for those kinds of folks.

peace

# 1300. I'm not sure even where to begin with this album. It is a record I have been trying to find for a long long time. I'm actually not surprised that it was delivered to me on my birthday, even if I wasn't expecting it. God is good. A little background information first about this band and album would be helpful. GREEN CARNATION did release an EP many years earlier but before they would release a studio album Tchort would leave to play bass for EMPEROR. The rest of the remaining members would get a singer and form IN THE WOODS... Tchort would reunite with the band after IN THE WOODS... called it a day. This album is very unique in the GREEN CARNATION discography for a number of reasons. It is their long delayed debut record, but the only one that would include the Botteri brothers(bass / lead guitar) from IN THE WOODS....In fact this album sounds like an IN THE WOODS... recording (dark, gothic, heavy, emotional and psychedelic), even including a guest appearance on vocals from Synne Soprano the gifted IN THE WOODS... singer. The other important fact to tell you about is that Tchort's daughter would die tragically previous to this recording, and in fact that awful event would be the concept of this album. This record is also dedicated to his deceased daughter. Of course knowing this makes Tchort's lyrics so meaningful as we are allowed a glimpse of his suffering, his questions and his sorrow. I'm reminded of the book of Job in the Bible where we read about Job's inner torment, thoughts and questions after losing his family and health. It's like Tchort takes us on a trip into the abyss. Yet there is no way for us to fathom his pain or loss. We can only listen helplessly.

The first song has no lyrics but for me this is the most emotional track on here. Even the title "Falling Into Darkness" conveys how Tchort must have felt when he heard the tragic news. It opens with bass and cymbals as drums and female vocal melodies arrive. The first time I heard the guitar come ripping in around 2 minutes and Synne start to sing those high vocal melodies over top, my eyes filled with tears. "In The Realm Of The Midnight Sun" is dark and haunting as female vocal melodies sing softly over top until she starts to sing the words : "Black lights, shattered dreams, broken hope, shadows over my pale face." "The world has casted me out and pushed me down into a darkness where only cold and fear can reach me." "I sink deeper, stumbling through the vast labyrinth of sadness, the track I follow leads me down to an ocean of sorrow and pain." The music is amazing ! In the beginning the guitar grinds away as the drums slowly pound. This song has both female and male vocals. It has calm and very heavy passages throughout. Screaming guitar 6 minutes in. Thunderous drums 9 1/2 minutes in and a minute later. Check out the drumming after 13 minutes.

"My Dark Reflections Of Life And Death" is very spacey to open as guitar comes and goes quietly. It's building as drums join in, until 4 minutes in the riffs hit us. Male vocals a minute later. He's asking questions at this point, longing for the past before all this happened. The lyrics are so depressing as he has just given up. The guitar grinds away powerfully as he sings. A calm 8 1/2 minutes in until we have silence after 10 minutes. It's starting to build until a crushing soundscape with male and female vocals comes in. Very powerful section where he sings "White bewinged angel of the light tempts me to change my life, come, come to me, she whispers, longing eyes, she stares through my soul and mind, wants me to become one with the light." He sings this over and over. Incredible section. Remember Tchort gave himself his name (Tchort) which is Russian for "Devil" or "Black God". Amazing section follows when the female vocals come in at 15 1/2 minutes. "Under Eternal Stars" is doom-like at times, very BLACK SABBATH sounding. I love this song that features female vocal melodies and male vocals. The guitar grinds and the drums sound incredible. I like the way they contrast the heavy passages with the calm ones. Great track.

"Journey To The End Of The Night Pt.1" opens with a cool guitar line. It's blown away a minute in by a distorted, blistering guitar solo as female vocals soar over top. Male vocals join in with drums. The rhythm rampages until after 3 minutes when it calms with a good bass line. Female vocals followed by more great bass. The tempo picks up 10 1/2 minutes to end it as it blends into "Echoes Of despair Pt.2". This is atmospheric and dark as drums build. Great sound ! Awesome song that blends into "End Of Journey? Pt.3". This is heavy and slow with male vocals. More incredible drumming as guitars grind away. The tempo picks up with male vocals 2 minutes in. Contrast continues. Violin late. It blends into "Shattered Pt.4" as Synne comes in singing in an uptempo soundscape. She changes to vocal melodies a minute in. Amazing.

It was worth the wait. Sure this album is not without it's faults, but this is one of those very special recordings that transcends the actual music.

Journey To The End Of The Night is the debut album from Norwegian doom/ goth progressive metal act Green Carnation. Green Carnation was founded by Tchort (Terje Vik Schei) in 1990 and released one demo called Hallucinations of Despair in 1991 which is basically simple black metal. Soon after that the band disbanded and Tchort went on to play bass for infamous Norwegian black metal band Emperor. Tchort is featured on Emperor´s classic debut from 1994 In the Nightside Eclipse. Soon after the recording of the album Tchort would leave Emperor.

Emperor where going through some difficult times as guitarist Samoth was in jail for Arson. He had been a part of burning down some of the ancient Norwegian churches in the summer of 1992. Drummer Faust was in even more serious trouble as he in the summer of 1992 had murdered a young homosexual man who had made strong sexual advances towards him. Faust agreed to go into a nearby forest with the man and stapped him to death after being furious of the man´s advances. Faust was jailed in late 1993. After these events Tchort probably felt the need for a new horizon. I must admit I´m not sure why he left Emperor, but it´s my guess that some of the above events had an effect on his decision.

As a sidenote Tchort is also a member of old school death metal band Blood Red Throne and black metal band Carpathian Forest.

When Green Carnation broke up and Tchort went on to play with Emperor the other remaining members founded In the Woods which is a band that is also featured on PA. After In the Woods disbanded in 2000 some of the members hooked up with Tchort again and they re-ignited the Green Carnation name. They recorded Journey To The End Of The Night and it was released in 2000.

Even though all members of Green Carnation holds strong ties to the Norwegian black metal scene Green Carnation is anything but an extreme metal band. The band uses doom metal guitar riffs that reminds me a bit of good old Candlemass when they are most up-tempo and melodic. When the riffs are slow and doomy they sometimes remind me of early My Dying Bride or Anathema ( it´s hard not to be reminded of My Dying Bride when the violin kicks in on Under Eternal Stars). The singing consists of female operatic soprano vocals and more ordinary male vocals. Note that there are no growling vocals on this album. The songs are generally very long. Four of them clocks in at over 10 minutes. I wouldn´t describe Green Carnation´s music as complex even though there are quite a few sections in every song. The music is very atmospheric. There are both distorted and acoustic parts on the album which means the album seems dynamic. Being a parent myself it´s hard not to be emotionally touched by the lyrics which are inspired by the death of Tchort´s daughter shortly before the recording of the album and the album generally has a very dark atmosphere because of this.

The musicianship is excellent but that´s expected when we´re dealing with experienced musicians.

The production is very enjoyable.

I think this is a good album, but I must admit that I´m having a hard time really getting into the music and finding catchy and memorable parts. It´s without a doubt a progressive album, but I think the songs seem a bit too similar in sound for me to call it excellent. The guitar riffs are not very interesting either. Too generic. It´s like they are just there to support the atmosphere and not to entertain which unfortunately for Green Carnation is one of the things I value most in metal ( Challenging and innovative guitar riffs for me thank you). I was in doubt if I should give the album 3 or 4 stars but I´m not really hooked even after a substantial amount of listens so 3 it will be. I hear something though and I might upgrade this album some time in the future if it opens up to me.

Journey to the End of Night ? 2000

9 ? Best Song: Under Eternal Stars

It's a frustrating rip-off of Opeth. Is that going to answer your questions quickly and without mussing anything up from point A to B? The soft guitar melodies might as well have not been written in the first place, the female singing doesn't match the music one bit, and she is so damn monotonous! She's pretty and all, but what's there to do about honest-to-goodness melodic sense, huh brethren? When are we going to stand up and fight against this vile tyranny? Eh, enough of that biased hogwash. Green Carnation are more than competent ? founded by two black metal guitarists who decided that black metal just sucked it up big time by itself and that nobody would take them seriously as musicians unless they burned down churches and ate the corpse of their murdered best friend. Assuming this Tchort fellow didn't want to rot in prison with Isahn, we get black metal + progressive folk.

It's not new, and it's not fresh, and they don't know what the hell they're doing. 'In the Realm of the Midnight Sun' has the same simple bass guitar groove pounding behind keyboard and loud guitar and pseudo opera atmospherics for nearly fifteen minutes, which is almost unbearable. 'My Dark Reflections of Life and Death' is even worse, nearing 20 minutes. It'd be understandable if the songs differed even slightly, but to be perfectly honest, this isn't anywhere near the case. It's fine when the male is singing and his voice fits the doom guitar chug, but what else? It's competent, and I commend them for doing something so unpopularly popular. 'Under Eternal Stars' contains some nice moments, but it's another case of not enough substance. It's four epics, little wit, no real melodies to speak of, and a lot of repetitive themes. G'day.

Green Carnation have enriched the progressive extreme metal almost to the equal level as "In the woods..." but were less influential and original at their time.

Their first album is the only one that bears some resemblance to their format period as "In the woods" with doomy and remote black metal echoes. All vocals are clean and the male ones do not display much range and emotions however, the female ones are shining while also being mournful.

Compositions are quite epic with unusual development, some acoustic parts thrown in and heaviness peaking with guitar/bass and fast drumming but still far away from being raw. This is a sophisticated avantgarde doom metal with some progressive traces and well worth exploring as the initial output of the band.

Fantastic gloomy atmosphere will not discourage you from enjoying the open mind by the band.

Listening diary 7th March, 2021: Green Carnation - Journey to the End of the Night (progressive metal, 2000)

I suppose if you twist your head a bit, you can hear glimpses of what would immediately follow this, a masterwork of long- form songwriting and modern progressive metal. But really, it's quite amazing how they managed to complete Light of Day, a 60-minute song, only a year after this, which makes most of its 10-minute songs feel like 60. Musically, this has some good moments, and it's got a nice gothic atmosphere which doesn't really come back as potent on any of the band's further releases. But it's just too long, and too repetitive to really justify it.

5.4 (2nd listen)

Part of my listening diary from my facebook music blog - www.facebook.com/TheExoskeletalJunction

Green Carnation's first full-length album is a frustrating affair. There are glimpses of greatness that however struggle to emerge from a sea of meandering songwriting and underdeveloped arrangements. The Norwegian band is the brainchild of Tchort (aka Terje Vik Schei) who, after a past playing bass and guitar with Emperor and Satyricon (and a stint in prison), put together Green Carnation as an expression of a musical vision that combines elements of gothic metal, doom, avant-garde and progressive rock. For this ambitious experimental project, Tchort recruited an excellent score of musicians. The Botteri brothers (In The Woods?) played bass and guitars, while the relatively unknown Alf T. Leangel was recruited on drums. A score of guest vocalists (both male and female) also appeared on the album, including Vibeke Stene (Tristania) and Synne "Soprana" Larsen (In The Woods?). Meanwhile, Leif Wiese (Opus Forgotten) played violin on a handful of tracks.

The album is dedicated to the memory of Tchort's late daughter and the music is inevitably dark, dense and desolate. Gothic and doom metal are suitable references, but Green Carnation are a strange creature that does not rest easily within the confines of a well-defined genre. Experimentation is the norm, and the album contains plenty of influences. Vaguely Floydian psychedelic progressions and sound effects abound. The song structures are fluid and dilated, and rarely follow standard repetitions of verses or choruses. A lot of the vocal parts are improvised and the various vocalists experiment with different styles, from soprano singing, to gothic crooning, to spoken parts. At times, the album reminds me of the most experimental side of Tristania. But Journey to the End of the Night is much more desperate and obscure, and less refined compared to Tristania and other similar gothic metal bands.

In truth, the record makes for an uncomfortable listen. The vocal improvisations are somewhat hit and miss. Often, the singing is devoid of any melodic structure and rather difficult to follow (also because sometimes the vocals are mixed really low). The irregular song structures are also challenging, especially when you have songs that exceed the 10-minute mark (half of the songs on the album do so) with plenty of tempo changes and new sections that provide very few reference points to the listener. At their worst, these songs come across as plodding and directionless ("Under Eternal Stars"). However, when Tchort's genius finds the right spark, great things happen. It's the case of "My Dark Reflections of Life and Death", a fantastic piece of music that takes the listener on a dark, introspective journey interspersed with clean guitar arpeggios, repetitive doomy riffs, chilling vocal melodies, and ominous sound effects. Here the rough edges of Green Carnation's music are met with the right arrangements and melodies, providing a magical combination that feels spontaneous and sophisticated at the same time.

Alas, "My Dark Reflections of Life and Death" stands alone as a marvellous beacon of light in an otherwise rather difficult and uncertain album. Ultimately, Journey to the End of the Night holds the same morbid fascination as a car crash: it's hard not to star,e even if you do not like what you see. I feel the same towards this album: I struggle to penetrate its deep, complex musical armour and I can only enjoy it in small doses. But it possesses a special, dark aura that springs from genuine pain. And when this darkness finds the right voice, the music is sublime.