Green Day

Green Carnation are from Kristiansand, Norway. They formed in 1990, but did not release their first album until 2000. This is because shortly after having formed as Green Carnation, main composer Tchort left the band to join Emperor. The rest of the band continued/restarted under a new name: In the Woods. Tchort decided to restart the band after In the Woods disbanded, including some old In the Woods members back into the band. They released their debut, "Journey to the End of the Night" in 2000, a 70 minute concept album, inspired by the tragic loss of Tchort's daughter. The result was an emotionally laden, folk-inspired, Progressive/Doom opus which took over 6 months of rehearsals before recording began, then a further 2 years before it was finally released, through German label, Prophecy Productions…

Here is yet another Peter Green collection comprised mainly of material from 1979 through 1983, with the thoroughly enjoyable Fleetwood Mac A-side "Man of the World," from 1969, included for some inexplicable reason. The material here is culled from Green's first return to recording after a six-year hiatus for personal and mental health reasons. The Peter Green who returned to the scene on In the Skies was a leaner and meaner player. His concern was more with the atmospherics of playing blues-inflected material than with the attack of the blues themselves. The opening track from that album, "Slabo Day," with its four-chord repetitive minor-key figure and organic hand percussion, is an anomaly in the Green discography, with the possible exception of "Albatross"…

This is a reasonably comprehensive collection of Peter Green's catalog, with 78 minutes of music at mid-price, drawn from In the Skies, Little Dreamer, Blue Guitar, White Sky and Legend, the first two albums contributing the majority of the best material here. Green's guitar playing is as impressive as ever, and his singing is nothing to ignore, a sweet, gently soulful rasp that recalls his one-time rival Eric Clapton at his best behind the microphone. There's just a bit of fall-off in quality between tracks like "Apostle" and "Little Dreamer," and later stuff like "Last Train From San Antone" when they're heard side by side. And a lot of this doesn't seem as strong today as it did in the late '70s, when Green was one of the last exponents of British blues still working in that genre and getting heard. But the sound is good, and the price is right.