Kamelot - Ghost Opera

[davidn]

Kamelot is easily the most evolved band that I pay attention to. They started off in the interesting experimental genre of abominable in the middle of the 90s, after which the departure of drummer Richard Warner and (I have to use this word in its loosest possible terms) singer Mark Vanderbilt let them slowly evolve into a mature power metal sound. They were never one of the more exuberant bands, preferring the unusual approach of staying very straight-faced and poetic, and this quality made them change further into something that I'd call progressive, experimenting with a wide variety of unusual instruments, time signatures and general sounds - so much so here that I'm really not sure what to call them any more. Because of all this, they're also the band with the worst name, because it brings up images of Rhapsody-style high fantasy dorkery that couldn't be further removed from what they actually sound like.

One thing leapt out at me immediately about their latest album, which I've taken a couple of years to get around to - I've already decided that "Ghost Opera" is far and away the most downbeat, depressing album I own (beating the first two, because I only paid $5 for each of those). You can read some detailed background information at http://www.rockunited.com/kamelot2008.htm , near the bottom of the page, for precise explanations of all the tragic storylines behind each song on it, but really all you need to do is look at the title list on the back - which includes "Silence of the Darkness" (which the notes misguidedly describe as "quite a fun track"), "Up through the Ashes" and "Mourning Star" - to get the general mood that's evoked by it. At the bottom of the notes section on that page I was surprised to read that the bonus track, which I don't have, might have been happier, but the description leads to a Pendulous Fall of its own... "Probably the most commercial song on the whole album. It's very catchy. We just had to pick one song and for some reason this made it to the bonus. It's for sure the best bonus track we've ever had. It's about a girl thinking about committing suicide." Ace.

So it's a bit difficult to really express whether I think it's any good or not, as much as I ever do when I make these posts. I don't think that I could listen to it all the way through in one go, certainly, without turning it off and listening to something happier instead. There are a couple of standouts, though - I think that The Human Stain is the best song on the album even though it might as well be called Everyone Is Going To Die, an example of their constant musical experimentation really coming together with the haunting piano and muted, mechanical opening that sounds a bit like the soundtrack to early Command and Conquer (along with Khan doing his obligatory wavey-hands actions in the video). "Anthem" is wonderful in an entirely separate and very non-metal way.

But on the whole, the new sound that they're evolving into is one of those things that I honestly feel guilty about not liking as much as I think that... people may think I "should" - it's similar to the feeling that you get when you think back to how dull you found the alleged literary classics that you did in secondary school, or being unsure that you should be one of the people to stand up and say that Finnegan's Wake is actually codswallop. Not that this album is bad by any means - there's a lot of amazingly constructed and often quite beautiful music here. Instead, it seems honestly rather a bad thing on me to admit, in so many words, that in evolving like this they've gone beyond the intelligence level that I actually want from my music.

Cheer up, Khan - I'm going to talk about Helloween next.

Comments

[kjorteo]

Interestingly enough, I can understand the sentiment even though it doesn't actually apply to me. I can (and frequently do) listen to that album in its entirety, and I love it...but it's definitely more complex than, say, Karma. It's not that much more dark or complex (it is more, but not that much more) than The Black Halo, though, so it's more of a slow progression than Kamelot suddenly deciding to do a dark album out of nowhere. However, they still have a ways to go before they reach Dream Theater levels of musical mad science, and (again) I really like Ghost Opera, personally.

I'm not sure why they described The Pendulous Fall as that much more commercial or upbeat or catchy than the rest of the album...it's about the level of The Human Stain and fits in with the rest of the album perfectly. (Try not to mind the exceptionally gory Hellsing AMV this was unfortunately set to, although with the tone of this review, it might just be appropriate.)

And William Faulkner has committed some of the gravest sins against the written word in the history of man, the "D" I got in English be damned.

Edit: And E.E. Cummings, too. Screw that guy. That isn't brilliant poetry; it's Heavenly lyrics if you just had to read the liner notes in a published anthology or something instead of hearing the songs. Although, now that I think about it, Heavenly setting why must itself up every of a park to music would be amazing.

[davidn]

Goodness gracious me. I wasn't aware of how some of E.E. Cummings' work read, but you have to wonder if there comes a point when someone will eventually decide they're not going to let something pass as literature on grounds of it being gibberish. And it's not going to be me, because I feel a tremendous philistine even suggesting that something by someone that I've been told is a master of the art doesn't have a clever hidden meaning in it somewhere, even if the concession that "Readers sometimes experience a jarring, incomprehensible effect with Cummings's work, as the poems do not act in accordance with the conventional combinatorial rules that generate typical English sentences" is just a very long-winded way of saying "Phrases cut up and pulled out of a hat". Unfortunately after reading the title in your link I couldn't help but mentally sing the entire poem to the tune of "The Sun" by They Might Be Giants.

I did listen to The Pendulous Fall when I read the description (though the one I found had a different video) to hear the promised upbeat Kamelot song that didn't make it on to the album, and definitely didn't hear one in it! I sort of realized during writing all this that Kamelot have really been very dark all the time - it's just got more noticeable to me since Karma. When I first started listening to Iron Maiden, my disapproving youngest brother described them as "always singing about somebody dying", which was honestly pretty accurate for a lot of their songs, and Kamelot isn't really any different, even in Karma (which I consider their happiest point, though I consider Epica their high point):

Forever - Death
Wings of Despair - Called "Wings of Despair"
Don't You Cry - Cried (Death)
Karma - Death
Elizabeth - Blood, guts, vampires, death

It's like being back in my third year English class.

Ghost Opera is undeniably a really cleverly-written and composed, emotional, poetic album, and it all adds up to me not liking it, which is something that bothers me far more than it really should. I used to think that they were on the road to becoming Dream Theater, changing from power to progressive metal, but Kamelot have instead found a unique and interesting place somewhere in complete genrelessness.

[kjorteo]

Kamelot hid the darkness in the typical power metal approach of dorky concept album references--two entire albums about Faust, "Elizabeth" is about Elizabeth Bathory, and so on. (Rhapsody is actually the king of this--the actual plot of the Emerald Sword saga is all but soul-crushing, at least until you realize that you're considering the "plot" of five consecutive power metal albums and the whole thing is actually quite ridiculous.) Elizabeth is still quite dark, especially since Countess Bathory was a real person, but...I don't know...somehow it just loses its edge a little when you realize the same inspiration also led to a boss from Castlevania.

Plus, Karma includes a song about the immortal Highlander. That has to count for something.

I'm not quite sure what else to say about Ghost Opera, though--I can understand it being a bit too far in that direction and certainly won't fault you for that view or anything, even though I personally still enjoy it.

[davidn]

Realizing that Kamelot had written a song about Highlander was a real boost to their appeal for me - there's something about the realization that somebody was driven enough to write a song about something you have any sort of interest in (particularly if it's something particularly obscure). Iron Maiden did the same thing to me with "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" and "To Tame a Land" and... a vast number of other things, really (and the other way round, I was only interested enough to seek out and watch "Falling Down" because of their song about it), and Gamma Ray did "Damn the Machine", though it took me at least five years to actually spot the connection in that case. I noticed recently that Dethklok or however you spell them hilariously have a song called "The Lost Vikings", which sparked an interest, but sadly wasn't... non-noise enough to sway my opinion of them.

I think a storyline's allowed to be upsetting no matter what guise it's presented in - I mean, I don't think there are many people who would admit to being emotionally involved in any game even now they've become a legitimately-seen form of entertainment and things like Albion, Cave Story and Mother 3 exist. Although in Rhapsody's case I would imagine that the inherent madness of their presentation would all but nullify any sad events anyway! Certainly, I was rather disappointed at the Iron Savior's... quite clear writing out at the end of their latest album, if nothing else, though that was more to do with the way that it signals the storyline that got me into them is probably over. Said storyline did have a plot revelation that genuinely surprised me in the fourth album, though, and that's just not something that you should expect on a dodgily translated sci-fi album.

[kjorteo]

There is that, I suppose...I'm reminded of how a good portion of the cast was killed off in Avantasia's The Metal Opera, Part II...and, as one example, Chalice of Agony is a fantastic song, but I must admit it is somewhat distracting to realize that this is the part where Kai Hansen dies.

[davidn]

Listening to that I'm again amazed at just how distinctive Kai's voice is - I can't imagine why people thought that he and Kiske ever sounded the same (I think I saw a line on TV Tropes to this effect or something - there was definitely an entry somewhere on it, anyway), because in a genre of very clear, high vocals, his... scratch, is all I can describe it as, really stands out (though Andi Deris has this quality as well). It makes me wonder how on earth I managed to miss that it was him on Angra's Temple of Hate for so long - and further than he sang most of "Time Machine" by Heavenly, although I think Ben Sotto was actively trying to sound like him then anyway.