The Last Candle

Wow.

I mean, really. Wow.

Wow as in, �That was an awesome, terrific show!�

Prior to the concert, I'd heard before about Kamelot and their proficiency to put on a great live performance. After DragonForce, however, I had wondered: is this what people mean when they talk about a great concert — just a lot of stage presence, i.e. sound doesn't really matter?

After last night, I found this to unequivocally wrong. Kamelot's sound was excellent, surely, with tone and clarity to rival the studio recordings. Guitarist Youngblood had his usual deft form and skill on full throttle, picking through his tactful workmanship carefully and confidently. Grillo was brilliant behind the skins; Oliver was the Lord of the Board; and the stand-in bassist (Glenn was out, for an untold reason) was the most energetic player on the stage.

And then there was Khan, frontman and pipes, keeper of the smoothest voice in metal. In an incredible contrast to DragonForce's LP Theart, who couldn't hit a high note without seguing into screaming as a cover, Khan belted out all of the classic soaring Kamelot tunes in perfect form. He wasn't afraid of hitting the top notes, either: both Abandoned and Epilogue, two tracks from the catalogue that feature no more than Khan's crooning in front of a simple piano or orchestral harmony, were part of the setlist, and both were sung so strongly that the audience was awe-struck at Khan's clarity and strength.

That's really the best testimony to give a stage singer, I think, or any musician: Put 'im (or 'er) in front of the audience with hardly any harmony behind them to lean on. The instrument can still put a spell on the auidence (assuming they can in the first place), they're spun of the good stuff. And Khan is.

Best live show I've ever seen, by one of the best groups I've ever heard.

The setlist was well-varied among the Knights' previous three albums (Karma, Epica, and The Black Halo). The show began with When The Lights Were Down, and the next dozen or so songs included Forever (with a terrific lead-in on guitar by Youngblood), Memento Mori (not as good as the album, but still powerful), Karma, The Haunting (with Epica's Simone, touring with Kamelot, accompanying Khan as on the album), Soul Society, The Edge of Paradise, The Black Halo, Center of the Universe, and March of Mephisto, which was oddly played as part of the three-song encore instead of as a lead-in to the set. The show didn't include any tunes from Kamelot's early catalogue, The Fourth Legacy and before, but Kamelot composition and tone has become much better in recent years, so I can't complain (or not too much, at least — I still would have liked to hear The Shadow of Uther).

There were two small mars to the show.

I didn't get the liner notes signed. This was by choice: bassist Glenn wasn't in the line-up, so the band wasn't complete. Not to say the stand-in bassist, Eric, wasn't excellent, because he was, but not being able to get the signatures of the entire original band wasn't an option. I'll see them again for those autographs,even if I have to travel to Chicago, Toronto, or Cleveland to do so.

The second disappoint was that the audience turn out was small to what Kamelot really deserves: the audience only included about 250 people.

Gahh! This group deserves a massive stage and a few thousand fans — as is the case when the Knights tour Europe for the festivals — instead of the few devotees that showed last night. It's dishearting to see wankers such as DragonForce draw a sold-out crowd while Kamelot, a much stronger and well-composed group, bring in only a few people.

But I might well complain why pop music hasn't died out yet either.

Even if the venue didn't show the numbers, the fans at the show were energetic and fevered with their enthusiasm for Kamelot, making up for the paltry population. The audience was obviously not a rabble of passer-bys that collected from the street — and if you knew the part of town the venue is in, this'd be even more obvious — but a composition of grateful, loving fans. We were all very, very happy to be there.

A bold statement from a Kamelot review I read a long time ago has stuck with me through the years. The statement, paraphrased, was, "With Kamelot existing, why do any other power metal groups even bother to try?" Hyperbole, certainly — the power metal genre is home to many fine and enjoyable bands.

But the more I see and hear Kamelot's material, whether live or studio, the more that bold statement starts to make sense.

Tonight’s big — and I mean BIG! Really BIG! — show:

Preparing for tonight’s show:

Wow.

I mean, really. Wow.

Wow as in, “That was a suprisingly incredibly terrible show!”

And who would’ve guessed? Surely not me: DragonForce’s deft technique isn’t so layered or complex that it wouldn’t be replicable live — just a couple guitars, bass, the usual. Not anything like a Blind Guardian or a Rhapsody song that requires the use of a choir and an orchestra pit brimming with brass and strings.

DragonForce’s strength isn’t in their production, however, or their lyrical/composition content for that matter. The strength is in their energy of tone combined with the searing speed of their vibrant melodies. That’s it — they do those things really well. Deft guitar, that’s all I wanted to enjoy: just Li and Totman cranking out solo after amazing solo live for a couple of hours.

Two problems.

One: the mix, or sound check, or whatever the name is for how the instruments sound live, were so screwed up that the guitars were lost in the bass and drums for almost the entire concert. Li and Totman’s finessed fingers could only be heard during the solo parts, which were, thankfully, about as good as the studio renditions. That left about 75% of the music behind, however, when only the relentless bass drum accompanied by the equally-relentless and only slightly more melodious bass guitar could be heard over the vocalist.

I really shouldn’t have to go on. DragonForce with the guitar is like a dragon without…fire. A pink dragon. Or like the band Hammerfall. Bad enough, leave it alone.

Oh, but there’s more. The singer, the driving force behind any power metal band, was terrible as well! Besides him being a gigantic, preening prima donna, who continuously spat and poured water onto the crowd of gangly, fawning black-attired teenagers, he would consistently sing out of key. Sometimes he’d hit a bad note, and just go into this death knell scream-cry kind of thing, as if that was some kind of powerful, manly recovery. Please: leave that business to the black Gothenburg crowd, where it actually suits the music, and where it actually sounds pretty good.

But the biggest travesty of all committed by the Pipes: screeching and howling right over the tops of the solos. No joke. This outrage wasn’t a consistent thing, fortunately, but several times I’d be anticipating a riff or lick, another chance for the concert to redeem itself at the hands of Herman Li or Sam Totman. And several times the moment would arrive, only for the shirtless, glistening, dancing jerk of a frontman to bawl out “EEHHhhhhh-GGaaaaaahhhhROOOOOOOOOooo-o!”

Didn’t even bother waiting around to get the liner notes signed — just didn’t care. What a disappointment.

The end of this week brings redemption to the live scene, however, as uber-band Kamelot will be in town. Kamelot may not have the technical wankery that DragonForce exudes, but Kamelot’s much more tactful and careful composition beats DragonForce’s manic guitar-centric writing. Bring on the Knights.

In the last couple weeks, a fantastic array of new releases have been…newly released. Shocking! Exciting! Let’s take a look at one of the offerings, which is surely one of the best metal releases in the past four years:

Prior to this release, I was skeptical about the progressive direction Blind Guardian had been taking: super-multilayer, overproduced, and hyper-conceptual, as evidence by their previous album A Night at the Opera.

Opera was a great album, surely — after all, Blind Guardian releases are by default excellent listening — but it lacked the typical mystical strength and the growling sharpness of previous cuts, particularly Nightfall In Middle Earth and Imaginations From The Other Side (my favorite). Opera was a fine piece of work, especially in the 14-minute opus And Then There Was Silence, but Nightfall was still better, and Imaginations was the best. The chronological trend among the three albums was evident: more orchestration, more layers, more thickness, less growl-howling from frontman Hansi, and a lesser emphasis on Marcus and Andre’s singing axework.

In the end, Opera was too much of…well, too much. The album was overwhelmed by layer upon layer guitar, orchestration, and choir overdubs that would leave Fabio and Luca of Rhapsody of Fire in awe. One could easily see how Blind Guardian’s classical and Celtic-influenced style could combine with extra production to great effect, but Opera brought it to the forefront, causing some of the best elements of Blind Guardian to fall behind.

Considering that Blind Guardian has mentioned several times that they’re working on a full orchestration album, I was expecting A Twist in the Myth to be even further along the uber-production path than Opera, if that was possible.

But after two weeks of listening to Myth, I’ve wholly decided my expectations were — very gladly — wrong, wrong, wrong.

A Twist in the Myth throws out the gaudy bombast from Opera and returns to a much more palatable — and listenable — Guardian sound. Myth could be most easily described as half Nightfall, half Imaginations, and a pinch of Opera, with the best parts taken from each.

For instance, the orchestra has been shown the door, and the guitars are back to the front of the mix. But maybe best of all, Hansi takes the mic back to himself again instead of sharing it with a choir — the way it should be. Sure, there are plenty of Queen-like overdubs, but besides being a staple of Guardian’s voicework since the first album, the use of overdubs is much more infrequent and well-placed than the constant choir on Opera. Hansi’s relented some of his roughness once howled out during Guardian’s earlier career, but the rest of the music has changed accordingly — and comfortably — to accompany the new timbre on pipes.

Thinking back to A Night at the Opera’s guitar sound, I cannot recall a single guitar hook, lick, or solo that stood out. I think the guitars were just simply crushed under the unresisting barrage of orchestration, and the album suffered because of it. Guardian guitarists Marcus and Andre were brought up on the classic, crushing sound of Queen, and as a result they’ve mixed the singing sound of Brian May with power metal to create a sound that’s both crunchy and grating, soaring strings with no loss of power. Behind the thick curtain of over-production, Opera missed out on that gorgeous sound.

On A Twist in the Myth, the guitars are at the vanguard of the harmony, accompanying Hansi much more like the days of Imaginations and Somewhere Far Beyond. The licks and hooks are brought closer to the front of the mix, and the solos, such as the rip-roaring one towards the end of Fly, are among some of my favorites. Another Stranger Me is a kick-ass rocker, with the stanzas alternating before a comely muted ostinato and a masterful two-guitar hook that duels one-on-one with Hansi for the melody. This Will Never End harkens back to the Bards’ early fast-finger speed metal days; Skalds and Shadows brings out the soft, acoustic, Gaelic-classical side; and there’s even a Opera-esque anthem in Carry The Blessed Home.

Conceptually, Myth is less satisfying than Opera, the latter which had a very particular concept for every song: Jesus Christ, Galileo Galilei, the Trojan War (twice, including one song that was 14 minutes), Nietzsche, Tristan and Isolde, and a half-dozen more. Opera has so many different classical and concrete themes that it can be called a concept album on history — not bad by any means, but like everything else on the album, the constant conceptulization is a lot to digest.

Myth deals with less concrete concepts, although Hansi’s writing is not any less sharp as a result. My favorite song of the album, Fly, is heavily inspired by Peter Pan and Finding Neverland (“Praise be to innocence, they all follow me / Praise be to innocence, that’s everything it needs”). Another Stranger Me tells a tale about a man on the border of psychotic schizophrenia. Otherland scribes about being trapped in a different land where exterior, unseen foes are in control — possibly a concept of the Tad Williams books of the same name. Lionheart relates the story of a passionate search (for the Lionheart, natch) afflicted by a disconnection with riddles and reality.

And so on. Myth’s concepts aren’t nearly as clear as Opera’s, or even Nightfall’s, the latter being a concept on The Silmarillion. But Myth’s music is better.

All said and told, this is a terrific album. A Twist in the Myth doesn’t reach the high level of Imaginations from the Other Side, but it beats both A Night at the Opera and Nightfall in Middle Earth. After four years since the release of Opera, the Bards are back in a Guardian-typical Heaven-high style and a Hell-fueled form. Another masterful work.

Topping off this fanatical review, here’s that Fly solo that this fanatic loves so much: