Green Carnation – The Acoustic Verses (CD)

I don’t know really if what one could give this album is a title of “Acoustic Verses”, but the vocals present on a track like “Sweet Leaf” does not titillate as much as it sound like Bono crooning over the next U2 hit. The instrumentation present on the track is what really gives this song a second life, as the Medieval metal (a la Mortiis) sound of the arrangements really allows for a specific atmosphere to be created on the track. “The Burden Is Mine…Alone” really solidifies Green Carnation as a solid band in the sense that they are able to thrive in a realm – an acoustic realm – where so many bands suffer through their forced scaling down of their music.

Actually, Green Carnation does better than just succeed in the field; they actually thrive and come up with a set of six songs that could conceivably work on radio as well as being requested life. These tracks are not mood killers, but will get individual’s hearts involved in a way that (up until then) their bodies were only allowed to. Even though half of the tracks have a traditional runtime, an individual cannot expect a payout immediately after switching on a track like “Maybe?”. The layout of these tracks is very leisurely, with Green Carnation creating an environment when things are began incrementally at the beginning of the track to only give themselves up to a listener at the end. It means that when a listener gets to a behemoth of a track like “9-29-045”, they have to lock themselves in whatever room the music is playing and make an earnest effort to receive all that Green Carnation has to give.

While there is little in the way that Green Carnation can be compared to an act like Marilyn Manson, a song like “Maybe?” really creates the same sort of atmosphere that made “Antichrist Superstar” such a memorable album. At forty-three minutes, listeners will have a treat in trying to decipher all the material that Green Carnation has laid into the album. If individuals are looking for the high-octane output of a band like Helloween, they should look elsewhere. If an individual is looking to be transformed in the same way they were after a Led Zeppelin album, “The Acoustic Verses” is the perfect album in that role. The antithesis of what Emperor does, Green Carnation opens up metal in bold new fashions.

Top Track: Alone

Rating: 6.6/10

[JMcQ]

Green Carnation – The Acoustic Verses / 2006 The End / 6 Tracks / http://www.greencarnation.no / http://www.theendrecords.com / Reviewed 17 January 2006