A Dark Poem, Pt. 1: The Shores of Melancholia by Green Carnation
Release date: September 5, 2025Label: Seasons of Mist
Green Carnation, that’s a name that is like a stroke of lightning, hitting at you with an electrical shock. They have been around for 35 years in their hometown in Norway. Going from death metal, doom metal, atmospheric gothic metal, melancholic hard rock, and into the progressive metal territory, you can’t deny the power that this band have enough electrical juices in their outlet system.
That and their seventh studio album A Dark Poem, Pt. 1: The Shores of Melancholia, is the first of a trilogy of albums titled A Dark Poem, which is unleashed on the Seasons of Mist label. Following it up to their 2020 release Leaves of Yesteryear, The Shores of Melancholia is almost like an imaginative soundtrack inside your head with skull-crunching riffs, metallic bass’, classical orientations, and the struggle to carry on.
And to be allowed to have bassist/vocalist Grutle Kjellson from the progressive metal band Enslaved to lend a helping hand on the Carnation’s new album, they know that they’re about to hurl through the epics and symphonic wonders that’ll make you want to go through repeatable listens to see what you’ve been missing.
When I think of the track ‘In Your Paradise’, you can imagine someone is having a complete nervous breakdown in the story and slip into this characterisation with this mellotron-like strings from the keyboards, revved-up riffs, power metal textures, and let’s just say the epic of all epics ascends into the landscape, revealing the mystery and wonders of the Norwegian atmosphere in all of its full power.
‘Me My Enemy’ keeps the Camel-like substance in its full glory that brings to mind the Mirage-era which speaks of the ‘Nimrodel’ synth intro that Peter Bardens does as either Kirkesola or Sordal tips their hat to the late legend in the prog community. But it goes into a layered-jazz atmosphere that Sordal does, walking into the early Floyd’s masterpiece before returning to their Death Metal roots as Grutle comes out of the floodgates, sending in this massive tidal wave on ‘The Slave That You Are’.
When Grutle comes swinging, you better run like hell, because he’s about to transform in this vicious and ferocious snarling beast, eating massive amounts of human flesh like there’s no tomorrow in his snarling vocals. And we ain’t talkin’ about nu-metal folks, we’re talking about a massive horror show that’s about to unfold, but with clean vocals in its Beauty and the Beast momentum.
The title-track hits you at all cylinders as Kjetil gives the rhythm section a chance to go in this spiritual journey, finding out the true meaning of the inner self with its ascending arrangements, by reaching upwards to the mountain top before closing it out with its nod to Sabbath in its Master of Reality-era as the earth begins to rumble on ‘Too Close to the Flame’.
The Shores of Melancholia is not just a perfect album, it is powerful and rich in its metallic defiance of how progressive and symphonic metal is supposed to sound; crisp, epic, and straight to the point on where the next chapter will take them into.
