Green Carnation's debut effort, 1999's Journey to the End of the Night, was an ambitious, courageous, but just as often clumsy attempt by black metal veteran Tchort -- lately of Emperor and Carpathian Forest -- to cram every possible facet of his astonishingly diverse compositional interests into a single, 70-minute progressive metal extravaganza.

One can only assume that he feared it would be his first and last chance to do so, because, for every worthwhile passage, melody, or chorus to be found in bloated epics such as "In the Realm of the Midnight Sun" (14 minutes), "Under Eternal Stars" (15 minutes), and the title track (21 minutes, in four parts!) -- and there were literally reams of them -- listeners also had to endure countless unnecessary bits and never-ending waffling.

Indeed, amid the excessive riff-repetition (descended from doom/death progenitors like Katatonia), atmospheric dark metal meanderings, and simply unconvincing, poorly rendered gothic female soprano vocals used throughout, it soon becomes apparent that a producer's editing touch would have come in very handy here.

Although, to be fair, Green Carnation did achieve an impressive balance of variety and engaging songwriting on this album's stand-out magnum opus, "My Dark Reflections of Life and Death," which served as a preview to their no less pretentious, but much more satisfyingly accomplished second opus, Light of Day, Day of Darkness.