A Dark Poem Part II: Sanguis

Following on from last year’s A Dark Poem Part I: The Shores of Melancholia, Green Carnation are back with the second album in their new trilogy, containing fewer surprises than the first (no Enslaved guest spot or dips into black metal territory here!) but arguably even better songwriting that will only continue to enhance the band’s well-deserved reputation amongst discerning progheads. As you’d expect, it’s a continuation of the sound of the first part, melancholic progressive metal with an embrace of melodic doom, but will inevitably suffer from initial comparisons with the earlier album which was packed full of hooks and was frequently simply beautiful. On first listens, Sanguis is a solid enough album if not quite as instantaneous – with time, it proves itself to be at least The Shores of Melancholia’s equal thanks to the sheer emotional weight of the songs it contains.

The opening nine-minute track (named simply Sanguis) has to be a contender for one of the band’s best ever tracks, with a heartfelt performance from Kjetil Nordhus atop infectious groovy riffing and some Deep Purple-esque keyboards from Endre Kirkesola. It has all of the fragile beauty that fans have come to expect, along with a grandiose air that simply thrives in the second half of the song as the band turn more towards darker territory with a more pronounced doom focus and some backing snarls in their only use on the album. Loneliness Untold, Loneliness Unfold follows with a lighter approach, Stein Roger Sordal taking lead vocals accompanied only by strummed guitar, and in the hands of a lesser band it would be a skippable interlude but Green Carnation make it work as a herald to the Acoustic Verses days and just as vital a part of the album’s soulcrushing effect.

Elsewhere, things are heavier, the crunchy opening to Sweet to the Point of Bitter keeping the sonic weight right through the six-minute piece, and the more orchestral-sounding keyboards give Fire in Ice’s doomy groove extra epic weight. Lunar Tale is an especially involving finale, plenty of acoustic guitar and even flute adding to the melancholic effect. If there’s a nitpick to be made it’s in some of the stranger moments here, like the samples that open Loneliness Untold, Loneliness Unfold and Fire in Ice – no doubt there’s a narrative running through all of this Dark Poem yet they do feel a little distracting from the music itself. This can also seem a little too much like a middle album in a trilogy at points, suggesting even bigger and more grandiose peaks to come. But that’s for sure a personal preference; Part II grows on you with each new listen and undoubtedly works both as a companion piece to the predecessor album and a (nicely taut) thirty-seven-minute album itself. If the band can keep this quality up, surely Part III will cap one of the greatest album trilogies we’ve had the pleasure of listening to in years!