Last year Green Carnation released the first album in a trilogy written and recorded at the same time. They’ve followed A Dark Poem, Part I: The Shores Of Melancholia with A Dark Poem, Part II: Sanguis, which sees them pull inspiration from within, addressing an abusive childhood and loved ones in crisis.
The weather in Norway may be grim, but Green Carnation singer Kjetil Nordhus and bassist/lyricist Stein Roger Sordal are in sunny spirits, ready to discuss new album A Dark Poem, Part II: Sanguis. The follow-up to last year’s The Shores Of Melancholia is the second entry in a trilogy that’s being released in parts, but was written and recorded concurrently.
Making three albums at once is an idea the members first had in the early 2000s, and they’ve been working on it since they returned from hiatus 10 years ago. The results of more than two decades of planning are finally coming out.
“You have to look at it as if you’re decorating a house,” Sordal says. “You take it on one room at a time. You can’t think of the whole house, because then you go mad. If you have one room and make that into a nice room, you go, ‘Okay, this is possible.’”
But you’re building three houses at the same time? “Yes!” What stopped it from becoming too much? “Alcohol!”
The trilogy was first presented by founding guitarist Terje Vik ‘Tchort’ Schei before Green Carnation went on their break in 2007. later Sordal and Nordhus ran with it, the other members being busy with family and personal commitments.“We were really eager to do that,” Nordhus says. “We prioritised it over many, many, other things, and not all of the other guys had that same chance.”
The band initially reformed to mark 15 years since Light Of Day, Day Of Darkness, their 2001 one-song, 60-minute magnum opus inspired by the death of Tchort’s daughter and the birth of his son not long after. The anniversary tour went so well that, in 2017, they began work on their comeback album, Leaves Of Yesteryear. The first ideas for A Dark Poem emerged from those sessions, but most of the material took shape during the pandemic, when Sordal and Nordhus locked themselves in an isolated cabin.
As if the volume of work wasn’t enough, the duo were fiercely meticulous with what they put together. “We have very different roles when we write,” Nordhus explains. “He plays all the instruments while my job is composition, transitions between themes; maybe we missed something, and I’ll have an idea and sing it to him. It’s back and forth all the time.”
“We would sometimes have up to 30 different versions of a song,” Sordal adds.
While the series doesn’t deliver an overarching narrative, Sanguis is a musical extension of the first record. Where Shores stuck to the core of Green Carnation’s gloomy yet melodic sound, throwing in the occasional curveball – like the psychedelic rock of Me, My Enemy – the new volume pulls further away from familiar territory.
Lead single and opener Sanguis (Blood Ties) commences with a booming Hammond organ – the grandeur of which is somewhat undercut when you learn that Sordal recorded it while drunk at 5am. “He’s tried to play it again and he’s never done it,” Nordhus says with a laugh.
Later songs Loneliness Untold, Loneliness Unfold and Lunar Tale eschew the heavier end of their repertoire, emphasising moody prog. “We had to fight with the producer, Endre Kirkesola, who also plays keys],” Nordhus admits, “It was natural for me and Stein Roger to put on some nice strings or whatever. He said, ‘No, that’s typical Green Carnation – this time we need the story and the lyrics to be in people’s faces!’”
I’ve felt for the last few years my friend’s going to die because he can’t take care of himself. It’s hard to watch
Stein Roger Sordal
Where the lyrics on Shores focused on external themes such as AI and broad emotions like isolation, Sanguis (Latin for ‘blood’) is a deep dive into Sordal’s personal life. The title track looks back on the abuse he suffered at the hands of his father. “I was never good enough at anything,” the bassist remembers. “Now that I’m older, I see that he had a terrible upbringing – much worse than mine. It was a pattern from my father and all his siblings.”
They reconnected last year and talked candidly about their experiences. But, before they could fully reconcile, his father died. “He wasn’t that sick,” Sordal says. “He was getting old, but he could have been around for 10 more years.” Has it changed how he feels about the song? “I had to go back and say, ‘Fuck, what did I do? Was this too brutal?’’ But the lyrics are true. It is what it is.”
Loneliness Untold, Loneliness Unfold, with Sordal on lead vocals, is about a close friend who “lost his way” through a mix of substances and, later, illness. “I’ve felt for the last few years that he’s going to die because he can’t take care of himself,” he says. “It’s really hard to watch.”
Fire In Ice pulls influence from the bassist’s wife, who’s living with the remnants of a brain tumour after undergoing partially successful surgery to remove it in 2017. “She’s gonna die of it one day, but they don’t know when,” he says, his tone of voice surprisingly unchanged. “The fuse is burning a little bit faster, but what do we want to do with our time here? Who do we want to throw out of our lives? Time thieves.”
The songs may be written and recorded, but the work is far from over. When Sordal and Nordhus are mixing the third album, which will come out later this year. The band have a number of European festival dates set for the summer, and they’ll headline a special show in their hometown of Kristiansand, where they’ll perform all three Dark Poem albums with an orchestra.
At first Nordhus doesn’t want to talk about what the final volume will sound like – but he concedes that putting on an orchestral show offers a pretty big clue. “There’ll also be a choir on the third album,” he reveals, “which is going to present something very, very proggy, and something we’ve never, ever been close to doing before.”
From a one-song album to a simultaneously-recorded trilogy and a huge orchestral gig, everything Green Carnation does seems to get bigger and bigger. “It’s to challenge ourselves,” Nordhus explains. “To try new things.”
A Dark Poem Part II: Sanguis is on sale now via Season Of Mist.