THE AWAKENING

Kamelot

Progressive Metal

3.70 | 24 ratings

From Progarchives.com, the ultimate progressive rock music website

ALBUM STRENGTH: I think it's the strongest Kamelot album since The Black Halo. The songwriting is a really good balance between being memorable and interesting.

ALBUM MIX: This is a very densely packed and busy album, but somehow they find room for everyone in the mix.

HOW PROGRESSIVE: The progressive thing that it achieves is being more symphonic then almost any symphonic (Prog) metal. Only Blind Guardian could claim to have integrated symphonic elements at this scale.

HOW UNIQUE: There's something about the mood of a Kamelot album that is always there. A certain melancholy or wistfulness. They really nail that here... some sort of ghostly vibe that's in every song, no matter how "metal" the song is.

PERFORMANCES: VOCALS - Tommy stills channels Roy Khan a bit, but he's far more his own singer than we've heard him before. High notes are really great when he does them. You can understand the lyrics pretty well.

GUITAR - This is the best Thomas Youngblood's guitar has ever sounded. Like everything else I've said, that's a matter of opinion... but I personally love his sound, especially the rhythm.

BASS - Good as always, but I need to listen to the album at louder levels to truly say what's different from the last album. He's just not playing Chris Squire riffs way up on the neck that stand out. When I saw Kamelot live, he really surprised me at how good and busy he was the whole time.

KEYBOARDS - Their are stretches of this album that don't feature a lot of keyboards, but when it is his time, they are gorgeous! If Oliver is doing the orchestration and subtle sound effects, then his combined role on the album is a huge influence on it.

DRUMS - Alex is new to Kamelot and this is his first studio album. He is up in the mix without crowding anyone else out... and it is super entertaining to listen to his parts. For most songs, you could listen to the whole track and just focus on the drums, and it would be pretty entertaining.

TRACKS - There are no weak tracks, but there are some stand-out "featured" tracks. I'll let others go track-by- track, but I'll say that it is an easy listen from beginning to end. I listened to it twice in a row on the first day.

OVERALL - This is not Dream Theater, but it is interesting and complex in it's own way. I think they've beat Nightwish at their own game. This album is fun, it's cool, it's epic.

COMMENTS - Before you decide you don't like Kamelot, spin the Black Halo and The Awakening. That will be the best example of Kamelot 1.0 and Kamelot 2.0. Thomas Youngblood to Kamelot is like Steve Harris to Iron Maiden: As long as he's there it's still the same band.

Single Coil | 4/5 | 2023-3-17

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