renkls It took me a long, long while to decide that this was a 4.5 star effort. I keep wanting to deduct a half star because of the drag of the 20 minute mark, but I feel 4 would be understating a very ambitious and epic work. It definitely set a powerful and somber mood for me and I have listened to it through enough to say it keeps me captivated every time I accept the hour long journey. Not the greatest single song/track album ever made, but close enough to warrant a lot of consideration for those with broadening prog tastes and enough time on their hands to listen to an hour long piece of progressive metal of a pretty refined kind.

Warthur Tchort's stab at the old Thick as a Brick album format delivers some pretty but rather forgettable progressive metal combined with some decidedly nonstandard and rather variable lyrics. To be honest, I think the album veers into cheesiness a little often for its own good - the female vocals partway through the composition, as others have noted, require the singer to sing higher than she's really able to handle, whilst the use of a children's choir just pushes the saccharine undercurrents of the album to the forefront. I understand that the piece is Tchort's meditation on the death of his daughter and birth of his son, and whilst it's laudable that he'd use such personal material as fodder for the album, on the whole I don't think it succeeds as material for general enjoyment.

Conor Fynes 'The Quiet Offspring' - Green Carnation (6/10)

Green Carnation was a project first incarnated by its members in order to explore sounds other than black metal, so it should not come as a surprise that this band has been constantly changing. Featuring members of the Norwegian black metal band Carpathian Forest, Green Carnation first began with an artistic doom sound; their album 'Light Of Day, Day Of Darkness' is a classic for its style, and considered by many of this band's fans to be a masterpiece. The bottom line is that Green Carnation had a great thing going on, but if this project had become stuck in one sound like Carpathian Forest, it would defeat the point. 'The Quiet Offspring' sees a big change of Green Carnation's sound, and while many listeners may be put off by the simplified approach that they take here, the band does do an admirable job of taking on this new sound, although I cannot say it is an improvement over anything they had done before this.

While I would not quite say that Green Carnation has traversed into the realm of 'mainstream rock', there are some big moves that the band has taken towards tighter song structures, and an overall more to-the-point attitude when it comes to their music. Considering that this is the same band who churned out an hour-long epic, hearing Green Carnation now adhering to the much more common four minute formula is a little jarring at first, although I will say that it is not quite as bad as it sounds; the band hasn't totally turned its back on its fans. We still have a metal edge, and proggy sound in the songwriting, although these are much less integral to what the band is about on 'The Quiet Offspring'. The songs have a progressive metal sound to them, but the familiar textures are transposed onto a more accessible style. It's certainly not a preferable move in terms of enduring musical enjoyment, but there are some damned good songs here.

The production and performance is edgy (albeit in a 'hard rock' sort of way), but there are also sounds here that emphasize atmosphere in Green Carnation's sound; much of 'The Quiet Offspring' is led by groovy guitar licks and riffs, but Green Carnation gives the listener an alternative here as well. 'Childsplay' parts one and two are leaning towards mellow ambiance over any rock orchestration, and the standout track 'Pile Of Doubt' has a very atmospheric intro that harkens back to the sounds of Green Carnation when I really liked them. Here, I am not feeling their music nearly as much, although the band manages to pull off this hard rock sound very well, and even throw in some added layers. The album- from by understanding- is a loose concept piece about childhood, but there is not so much depth in it as to give it much attention. Green Carnation may have simplified (some might say 'dumbed down') their sound here, but 'The Quiet Offspring' is still worth checking out.

Sheavy (original review from ProgArchives.com)

A monstrosity. I like this album, fairly well, with the sole exception of that one thing that holds it down. Most people probably know what I am talking about. Those female vocals with that middle eastern part. It seems very out of place and does absolutely nothing for this album/song, the part where her voice vibrates is just utterly terrible. If it were not for that one flaw then I would say this is a masterpiece, but I just can not. The rest of the album I think is pretty creative anf I feel they definitely put a lot of effort into this release. It is just dragged down by that one part.

bonnek This is the kind of album that suspiciously sounds as if it was written for me. Green Carnation has the majestic melodious doom metal sound of The Gathering's Mandylion mixed with the quiet and spacey atmosphere from Anathema's Judgement. Both bands with a strong Pink Floyd flavor in the sound, and so does Green Carnation. Unfortunately, there are a couple of things that reduce the enjoyment.

The album brings one continuous 60 minute piece of music and the band has been very successful at making it flow very smoothly and spontaneously. There are some parts where the music plods along a bit but I'm a doom metal enthusiast so that's no issue for me, I'm used to worse plodding then this!

The music is solid throughout but lacks true highpoints, moments of splendor, crescendos that build up a tension and release it with a devastating blow. Everything stays too much at a same volume, pace and intensity. There's no 'wow'-moment at any point. Only the guitar solo around 42 minutes gives a try. Another thing that bothers is that the chorus is repeated too much in the first half. The vocals are warm and melodic but are totally lacking in dynamics as well.

There's one more issue with this album and it's the female vocals halfway in. Who gave this poor woman the idea to sing higher then she possibly could? She's miles off her high notes. The effect is very amateur and grating at best. It's probably an attempt to sound like Dead Can Dance but it's a sad failure. This vocalist is no Lisa Gerrard and certainly no Diamanda Galas, who would have ripped this section apart! Besides, the melodies are very unremarkable. Worst of all, this whole album is mastered as one track so you can't even skip this part. Ripping to mp3 and cutting it up seems to be the only solution to avoid this.

Light Of Day might be an attractive album to try modern metal because it has no gruff vocals, but it is misses the dynamics and imagination to reach true greatness. It could have been 4 stars, but the hysterical female vocals in the middle easily shatter some stars to bits.