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Camel - Camel CD (album) cover

CAMEL

Camel

 

Symphonic Prog

3.95 | 1520 ratings

From Progarchives.com, the ultimate progressive rock music website

snobb
Special Collaborator
Honorary Collaborator
3 stars Camel's debut in fact is nice album. Really strong technically as for debut, it contains very eclectic sound (in sense there is no way "classic" Camel sound of later works).

For good and for bad, this album has many influences,dominated in prog circa 1973. Symphonic prog, Canterbury sound, mellow hard rock,etc. In this album I like their true rock roots (very soon they will miss them), energetic and small amount of sweet-pop additives they will be so well known just few years later. Some vocals there possibly are quite controversial, but heavy keyboards passages, plenty of rocking guitars, melodic and quite complex rock atmosphere - all these really made the debut album attractive release.

From negative side I want to notice that the album is quite unfocused,especially stylistically, and sounds like band of good musicians just searching for their face (what is in fact true).

On their two next releases they will find their own style, and I believe,this debut work is good start to "Mirage" and "Snow Goose" both. Then band will turn to simplified,more mellow (and even cheesy on some albums) and polished sound,and will become hardly interesting for someone but heavy fans. So, this album isn't best place to start, but if you like "Snow Goose" and " Mirage" yet, third logical choice is this release (if you're not a fan of synth-pop over- arranged music, then you can try some their later releases).

My rating is 3+ for still raw and not very original, but rare really prog rock album of popular band.

snobb | 3/5 |

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