Kamelot

Oh my, revisiting Silverthorn (while playing Dark Souls) and it is just so awesome! Every friggin' song's a killer, I'm serious (despite some of the strong Seventh Wonderisms in Torn - the chorus! - and Song for Jolee).
 
Anyway, despite not having enough time to visit the forum very often recently, after a recent re-listen ot several Kam albums, I decided to update my album ranking:

1. Karma
2. Epica
3. Silverthorn

4. The Fourth Legacy
5. Black Halo
6./7. Poetry for the Poisoned
6./7. Haven
8. Ghost Opera
9. The Shadow Theory
10. Siege Perilous

11. Dominion
12. Eternity

Yeah, I think that's about correct.
 
TheMercenary said:
blabbermouth.net

KAMELOT To Release New Studio Album In Early 2023

KAMELOT's long-awaited new studio album will finally be released in early 2023. Among the working songtitles set to appear on the follow-up to 2018's "The Shadow Theory" are "Bloodmoon", "Eventide", "Awakening", "Midsummer's Eve", "The Great Divide", "Opus Of The Night" and "Pantheon". The...
blabbermouth.net blabbermouth.net
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As always, I am mildly simmering with tempered excitement.

It's always cool to hear a new Kamelot album (or just cool to hear a new album with Tommy singing in general), but based on the album cover piece shown it's gonna be another goth chick/dystopian future album. Can't say I'm pumped.
 
Ah Kamelot...I used to be quite a fan of the Fourth Legacy album and saw them live on that tour although I came for support act Evergrey who cancelled their gig. The later Khan albums weren´t my thing anymore. Karevik is a great vocalist but I have the impression he´s RoyKhanized in Kamelot.
 
MindRuler said:
Ah Kamelot...I used to be quite a fan of the Fourth Legacy album and saw them live on that tour although I came for support act Evergrey who cancelled their gig. The later Khan albums weren´t my thing anymore. Karevik is a great vocalist but I have the impression he´s RoyKhanized in Kamelot.
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I actually don’t think Khan’s voice or style fit the last few albums he was on, much less influenced Thomas Youngblood leaning even further into that vein with Tommy.
 
MrKnickerbocker said:
It's always cool to hear a new Kamelot album (or just cool to hear a new album with Tommy singing in general), but based on the album cover piece shown it's gonna be another goth chick/dystopian future album. Can't say I'm pumped.
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Agreed. Ever since we went to that show a few years back and 90% of the audience was comprised of 15-year-old goth girls, I've completely lost interest. The oldest song they played was March of Mephisto. Their music is watered down scenery rock, with each new album having 1-1.5 songs of interesting material before circling back to mid-tempo drudgery that's as dull as dishwater. It's hard to believe that this is the same band that made Fourth Legacy, Karma, Epica, and Black Halo.

As far as I'm concerned, though, this isn't the same band. As long as they continue in the direction they are and don't do any "classics only" tours, I have absolutely zero interest. Their post-Black Halo music does that little for me.

Tommy is such an absolute waste in this band. The dude can wail, and that's precisely the problem - Kamelot needs an actor, not a wailer. For those who really want to hear Tommy show off his skills, check out Seventh Wonder and Ayreon.
 
2022/3 Kamelot run completed and here's my brief take. Shockingly, not much has changed.

The Fourth Legacy (1999)
Classic, glorious power metal just dripping with exciting cheese. An absolutely delightful record with a band starving to find their place. I adore this album, despite its couple youthful flaws. A

Karma (2001)
Keep the hype train rolling, because this is the prototype for classic power metal to me. Every song is good, most are great. Khan is on fire. The title track is the best thing they've ever written. A+

Epica (2003)
Every (actual) song is amazing. It's a majestic, dark, beautiful hunk of cheese. The only downside is the amount of interludes. A

The Black Halo (2005)
Kamelot peaks as artists while also simplifying their sound. Things get groovier, moodier, and darker, but the songs are still great. Unfortunately this creates a template that will be copied into oblivion. A

Ghost Opera (2007)
Take all the worst musical changes of The Black Halo and toss on a lukewarm bucket of water (and some goth makeup). The title track is good, the closing track is good, everything else sounds like bland toast wearing a Halloween cape. Khan begins his vocal decline and his use of effects is grating. C-

Poetry for the Poisoned (2010)
Somehow manages to improve on the previous effort, but the bad habits, bad vocal FX, and pervasive "downer" vibe remain. Some new, dark twists are intriguing and there are some songs and moments I really like, but it's far from their peak and certainly a whimper of an exit from Roy Khan. C+

Silverthorn (2012)
Tommy Karevik arrives and holds his own, while reinvigorating the band with a bit of immediacy. They double down on the dark, gothic atmosphere and mid-tempo tunes, but Tommy's pure voice is great and overall the album is consistent. B

Haven (2015)
The first half of this album is quite fantastic, with the band fired up and Tommy really proving himself as Kamelot's new frontman. Even the cliched duet ballad is good. Unfortunately, the second half sounds like a beaten dog thrown over a cliff. An egregious amount of guest vocals and bland compositions ruin what could have been an awesome new chapter. B-

The Shadow Theory (2018)
If you look up "uninspired" in the dictionary, there should be the album cover of The Shadow Theory. The structure, compositions, and performances lack any sort of immediacy, tread absolutely no new ground, and are bottom tier Kamelot. Burns to Embrace is good, the cliched duet ballad is nice, and I enjoy Vespertine, everything else is like being spoonfed cold oatmeal in a grey room. D
 

Heavy music is nice, the eastern melodies are nice, Tommy doing some lite-bluesy runs a la Seventh Wonder in the verses is nice, the shifting minor/major solo is nice…it’s all very “nice”.

Those chorus lyrics are atrocious.
 
Yeah, this is doubling down on all my issues with Shadow Theory. Promising intro, solid verses, and then a nothing a of a chorus.

I remember when Youngblood and Khan were the gold standard in power metal songwriting.
 
Another new one:


It's better, I think, than One More Flag In The Ground while also being less memorable. Definitely sounds more like old Kamelot, minus the guitars being hidden behind everything else. It's very definitely a direct reference to Ghost Opera, I mean they literally reference the main musical motif from Ghost Opera after the chorus.
 
A huge step up from from One More Flag in the Ground in my opinion. Tommy is really playing to his strengths here, more going on musically, and far more interesting lyrically. Makes me slightly more optimistic about the upcoming album.
 
I think it's pretty solid. Starts off mostly very strong but tapers off a bit at the end. I'd say One More Flag in the Ground is the only real weak point. The Great Divide and The Looking Glass are some of their best in years.

For their Karevik albums I'd put it above Shadow Theory but below Silverthorn and Haven.
 
It's another B league Kamelot album for me. It's far, far better than the pretty awful Shadow Theory, but still not as strong as Silverthorn or the first half of Haven. Luckily, there's nothing truly bad here, just some lesser, uninteresting songs.

After two full dedicated listens, these are my observations:

- Muddy as fuck production. The rampant layers of keyboard, choir, and orchestra synths just squash any dynamics in the music. Oliver has officially become my least favorite part of Kamelot (also notice the band started going to shit as soon as he joined).
- Tommy sounds great, but his voice is far too quiet throughout the album.
- Where are the guitar solos? The one redeeming quality of The Shadow Theory was that it had pretty awesome guitar solos.
- I'm done with the nondescript, "cinematic" intros and outros on Kamelot records. They serve no purpose and they aren't actually referencing melodies from the album, they're just fluffy puff pieces to pad out the album and make it feel "epic"
- This album needed an epic song.
- A lot of the songs have big, melodic melodies, but not necessarily catchy ones.

Good-to-great song: Opus, Midsummer’s, Looking Glass, New Babylon, Pantheon
Fine Enough: Divide, Flag
IDK They All Sound the Same: Eventide, Bloodmoon, NightSky
Nope: Willow, intro and outro
 
I need another listen, because I can't believe my ears. I first heard it two days ago and...

...honestly, as a dedicated Kamelot apologist (I mean, Silverthorn is in my top 3! I don't even think that Shadow Theory is that bad and I can enjoy Siege pretty much, actually), I was disappointed and angry.

I don't remember my first listen of any of the post-Vanderbilt Kamelot albums to be this rough. Say what you will about Ghost Opera, Poetry for the Poisoned or Shadow Theory, but the first had killer stuff like the title track or Blücher, the third still had top-tier track in Burns to Embrace and some nice stuff like MindFall Remedy and others to boot - and Poetry, well, that has some of my favourite Kamelot moments in general (so I'm madly in love with Hunter's Season, I can't get enough of Zodiac and the title track is not just one of my favourite epics by them, right after Elizabeth, but also has my favourite Simone Simons performance ... probably ever, I kid you not. So what.)

But this shite?

It's not just there are no top-tier songs - I don't remember a single one, which must be a first for the band. Oh, right, I remember Opus... for all the wrong reasons, mainly for copying Ghost Opera pretty much verbatim. Although it kinda makes it work, but still. I guess the trio of Bloodmoon, NightSky and Looking Glass could have been turned into a single great song, somehow...

But then again, what's with all the millennial whoops everywhere? Is this a sodding Imagine Dragons record? Have I put in a 2012's album by Coldplay by mistake? It peaks on Flag, which is just a headache and a half - that chorus, geez - but also on Bloodmoon and elsewhere.

Why does the album sound like it was recorded in the depths of someone's rectum? This is 2023, you are a really rich band, why can't you just sound normal? Is that too much to ask? I get that Maiden sound like they do because 'Arry is half-deaf by now and refuses to admit it, but do you have the same problem?

I can't even remember when Youngblood did an actual solo. Are there even any? I seriously don't remember.

The first and last 3/2 tracks (including/excluding the intro and outro) completely passed me by. I don't remember them at all. Do you remember when - even if you hated some of them, every single track was memorable, like on Karma, Epica or Silverthorn? Do you remember how the title track of The Black Halo was actually the exception of not having an actual chorus?

Sorry to be this relentless, but I just got frustrated by one of my favourite bands. It happens.
 
P. S.
MrKnickerbocker said:
- Tommy sounds great, but his voice is far too quiet throughout the album.
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It's time for Tommy to go. He's the Floor of the band - an extremely professional nobody. I wish there was more stuff that would sound like stolen from Seventh Wonder, like Torn and Jolee from Silverthorn, but we don't even get that anymore. The vocal melodies are mostly non-existent and it just feels to me it's precisely because Tommy is a performer, not really an artist. He looks pretty, he sounds great, but it's just empty and useless. Maybe it's because of what they give to him to sing, but still, if he's not a hired gun, he should captivate at least by the vocals. But he's just a mannequin by now.

Bring Khan back.
 
JudasMyGuide said:
It's not just there are no top-tier songs - I don't remember a single one, which must be a first for the band. Oh, right, I remember Opus... for all the wrong reasons, mainly for copying Ghost Opera pretty much verbatim. Although it kinda makes it work, but still. I guess the trio of Bloodmoon, NightSky and Looking Glass could have been turned into a single great song, somehow...
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I very much agree about the "samey" nature of a lot of these songs. They're missing the hooks that the best Kamelot songs have.

The referential melody in Opus (post-chorus keyboard line) is a pretty cool nod to the original song, though. I have no issues with it.
JudasMyGuide said:
But then again, what's with all the millennial whoops everywhere? Is this a sodding Imagine Dragons record? Have I put in a 2012's album by Coldplay by mistake? It peaks on Flag, which is just a headache and a half - that chorus, geez - but also on Bloodmoon and elsewhere.
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I'm legitimately confused by this. Where are these millennial whoops?
JudasMyGuide said:
Why does the album sound like it was recorded in the depths of someone's rectum? This is 2023, you are a really rich band, why can't you just sound normal? Is that too much to ask? I get that Maiden sound like they do because 'Arry is half-deaf by now and refuses to admit it, but do you have the same problem?
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Yep, it's muddy as fuck and I blame the composition (thanks, Oliver) as much as the production. The mixing is not good.
JudasMyGuide said:
I can't even remember when Youngblood did an actual solo. Are there even any? I seriously don't remember.
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Barely. Solos were the sole redeeming quality of The Shadow Theory and they are virtually non-existent here.
JudasMyGuide said:
P. S.

It's time for Tommy to go. He's the Floor of the band - an extremely professional nobody. I wish there was more stuff that would sound like stolen from Seventh Wonder, like Torn and Jolee from Silverthorn, but we don't even get that anymore. The vocal melodies are mostly non-existent and it just feels to me it's precisely because Tommy is a performer, not really an artist. He looks pretty, he sounds great, but it's just empty and useless. Maybe it's because of what they give to him to sing, but still, if he's not a hired gun, he should captivate at least by the vocals. But he's just a mannequin by now.

Bring Khan back.
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That's the thing - Tommy has a huge hand in the songwriting! He writes all the lyrics, melodies, and even has musical passages changed to better accommodate his ideas. Youngblood has talked about it a few times and how much he values Tommy's "songwriting input and ideas". I put a good amount of the blame on his writing - it just is not as good as Roy's was for the band.
 
MrKnickerbocker said:
The referential melody in Opus (post-chorus keyboard line) is a pretty cool nod to the original song, though. I have no issues with it.
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I wouldn't, too, if it wasn't the only memorable part of the album for me .. at least during the first listen. Then it just feels ... sad. When a reference to an older track (which is from an album when they were already past their zenith for many, even if not for me, necessarily) is the highlight of the record, you have a problem.

MrKnickerbocker said:
I'm legitimately confused by this. Where are these millennial whoops?
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Maybe I'm technically wrong - I'm not sure if these are really millennial whoops, that is, "whoahs" alternating precisely between the dominant and the mediant of the scale, maybe the intervals are different - I'd have to go and check again - but there's definitely this feel of "Coldplay choirs", if you know what I mean, mainly in those two songs I mentioned. I indeed felt like listening to an album from 2011-2014, an Imagine Dragons album. Sorry if you don't hear it, I can't explain it better right now, but for an example, Bloodmoon beginning from 2:52, that's the feel I'm talking about.

MrKnickerbocker said:
Yep, it's muddy as fuck and I blame the composition (thanks, Oliver) as much as the production. The mixing is not good.
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MrKnickerbocker said:
Barely. Solos were the sole redeeming quality of The Shadow Theory and they are virtually non-existent here.
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Thank you.

MrKnickerbocker said:
That's the thing - Tommy has a huge hand in the songwriting! He writes all the lyrics, melodies, and even has musical passages changed to better accommodate his ideas. Youngblood has talked about it a few times and how much he values Tommy's "songwriting input and ideas". I put a good amount of the blame on his writing - it just is not as good as Roy's was for the band.
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Okay, then let me just repeat that first line: Tommy has to go. I genuinely don't understand why he writes stuff like this and why they like it. It's just so... bland. I wonder how a bloke coming from Seventh Wonder of all groups, ending in Kamelot, could write stuff like this.
 
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