Following in the footsteps of such giants as LED ZEPPELIN comes GREEN CARNATION’s first all-acoustic album, aptly titled Acoustic Verses. While this is an unplugged affair, heaviness still characterizes the record by way of the band’s trademark emotional, introspective themes. The song arrangements are relatively straight forward and carry a folk-tinged feel to them. There’s a very delicate tone that carries through the Acoustic Verses. Bassist Stein Roger Sordal contributes some nice lead vocals that eerily sound like his former bandmate, Jan Transit, from IN THE WOODS… “Maybe?” has a great haunting, instrumental second half complete with a ghostly sounding theremin. The following track, “Alone,” has a great lead violin part that dances above the rhythm guitars. The center piece is the 15:29 long “9-29-045,” which ranks as one of the best songs GREEN CARNATION have written thus far. The song also marks a turning point for the record as the two remaining songs take things into more sublime and melancholic territory. While the Acoustic Verses is not mindblowing, it achieves its purpose of being a nice collection of songs displaying yet another dimension of GREEN CARNATION’s ever expanding repertoire. As the liner notes indicate, the true monster is right around the corner in the form of part two of the doom trilogy, entitled The Chronicles of Doom. This band’s story is far from over. (The End Records)