Listening to A Dark Poem, Pt. 1: The Shores of Melancholia is like having the FlashPass at Six Flags, but instead of cutting lines for coasters, the listener is airlifted to a macabre world facing the embodiment of its greatest scourge. Within this land, the heaving of darkened warships has summoned a cull of sound merchants to speak ill fates for the world. There is no other voice than that of Green Carnation with its endless heave of subdued, yet darkly enchanting power.
All this, of course, only if you can ‘buy in’ to the dream that this band is selling. Maybe the hype around the filming of Christopher Nolan’s new big-budget 2026 Odyssey film may turn a few heads to this theatrical storytelling approach to Metal. Still, otherwise, this new album from Green Carnation is for a select few. The ones who get it, get it; those who do not, are left wondering what they just spent nearly 43 minutes listening to, and how it constitutes “A Dark Poem, Pt. 1.”
Released on September 5, 2025, through Season of Mist, Digging past the surface level of this album, as the esoteric title suggests, the release cycle of Green Carnation and the purpose behind this release provide key insights into the nature of the project. This is not a freshman release from an independent grizzled garage kit out of Scandinavia, it is a well-rehearsed epic poem released 35 years after the bands initial start in 1990, 24 years after their hiatus in 2001, 9 years after their official return where they announced a second version of 2007’s A Night Under the Dam in 2014, and 5 years after their return to form with the entirely Gothic Prog Metal release Leaves of Yesteryear in 2020. There is a lot of history behind this band, and it is not scandalous or exhausting like the Punk genre’s current slow drip of old bands returning for final releases before every organ of every member of their bachelor party sputters into a modern grave. Green Carnation is a well-celebrated act that consistently enchants the audience.
It is the dredging buzz of a bass line that sets the stage for each song to begin, but that would be nothing without Johnathon Perez’s eccentric yet cavernous drums that build the walls of evil this album lives inside. And returning to what was said earlier about an “independent grizzled garage kit out of Scandinavia,” the album is produced by Green Carnation’s Vocalist Kjetil Nordhus and Bassist Stein Roger Sordal. With decades of experience under his belt, the creative control of this project seemed to be of utmost importance to Nordhus, and it has paid off as the album is tight yet expansive, lingering in disquiet and soul-grating desperation to inform the listener of the speaker’s emotional environment. A distinction has been made between speaker and vocalist here because of the title of the album.
All matters considered, Green Carnation’s most impressive release is still Light of Day, Day of Darkness, the 2001 single-track, hour-long studio album, which they performed to a sold-out venue in 2016. With that in mind, with continued dedication and polish in the subsequent releases of this poem, there is a chance for the band’s latest music to become their greatest. There are currently two more albums in the sequence of this ‘poem,’ and it will be interesting to see the differences between each release.
Overall, A Dark Poem, Pt. 1: The Shores of Melancholia leans further into the energy of even Viking Metal. This is the case especially within their pre-release single “In Your Paradise,” which features a never-ending bass and drumline that forces an energetic tempo to match the assured voice of Nordhus as he sings, “The cataclysm’s here/ It’s in your head, ah/ Alive when you are alive/ That’s your paradise.” It is nothing less than prophecy for this poem, which wanders deep across an ocean of lost souls, but never finds its destination, nor its way back home.
The question remains: is this precisely what Green Carnation wants for the first of three releases? Or is there something missing from this release that will not be brought to light until the band’s next release is placed in comparison? Until then, Cryptic Rock gives A Dark Poem, Pt. 1: The Shores of Melancholia 3.5 out of 5 stars.
){kind=link}
No comment