Kamelot

The worldwide conquest of Kamelot

Interview with vocalist Khan of Kamelot on the 23rd of May 2007 by Vera

Since ‘The Black Halo’ and the magnificent DVD ‘One Cold Winter’s Night’ the success of the progressive metal band Kamelot has grown to immense proportions. One might say that the new CD has a simpler approach (no concept, less guest musicians), but man, the music is really impressive. ‘Ghost Opera’ will be supported by extensive touring. Hardly home from touring the surrounding northern countries, it was time for press contacts and interviews and later on this year they won’t be home either. It is no wonder that vocalist Khan sounds a bit weary when I got him on the line from Norway on a Wednesday evening in May. His answers may be a bit shorter than the ones I usually publish, but the essence is there. And remember: it is the music that matters and ‘Ghost Opera’ is a stunner.

Can the DVD ‘One Cold Winter’s Night’ be seen as the closing of a chapter and ‘Ghost Opera’ as a new beginning?

No, not really. I prefer to see ‘Epica’ with the beginning of the Faust story as the ending of the second era of Kamelot. And now we have a new one with ‘The Black Halo’, the DVD and ‘Ghost Opera’.

‘The Black Halo’ was a huge success, probably even more than you expected. Was it giving any extra pressure when writing this one?

No, not really. I mean, we always do the best we can anyway, so we cannot do any better than that. We put time, love, money and energy in it.

You tried out new things and worked with new people on ‘Ghost Opera’. Can you tell something more about that?

The guests have not a big focus on this record. Simone Simons of Epica contributed on one song. She’s on the song ‘Blücher’, it is more a uniform line she sings in the chorus. There is Amanda Sommerville who was in our backing choir before, she sings on ‘Love You To Death’. She’s doing three or four songs on this album. She has a wonderful voice. We tried out a kind of new direction with the instruments we used on the album, like the Chinese guitar kind of thing we used in the beginning of ‘Love You To Death’. There is Indian citer on ‘Rule The World’. They added three trombones to the orchestra. Deep horns are part of the new sound. These experiments are a natural development from doing this for a living and you are working on it professionally. Just developing over a period of several years.

You wrote the lyrics, isn’t it?

I write most of the lyrics but me and Thomas (Youngblood – guitarist) write the music together. Thomas normally comes over to Norway for songwriting.

‘Ghost Opera’ is the first album with keyboardist Oliver Palotai as a permanent member…

That did not have a big impact on the sound of this record. Oliver is playing some solos and piano, but we still use Miro’s orchestral arrangements because this is a big part of our sound. Miro is extremely good in that, so we did not change that. In a sense he is like a fifth member of the band. But Oliver is a nice addition to our live performances. He is a tremendous performer and he is a really good musician and you have to be a very good musician to play the stuff that’s need to be played on keyboards in Kamelot. It is crucial, otherwise it does not work. He does everything, from solos to rhythmically difficult parts, classical piano playing, there are lots of things a keyboardist has to manage in this band. And he is a nice personality, that’s also a thing that counts a lot.

Some of the lyrics are personal, but there are lyrics about myths and historical things as well. Can you tell a bit more about that?

‘Love You To Death’ for example has a Chinese theme. This is a good example of how we let the music inspire the lyrics. We had those oriental sounds and looked at old Japanese legends and we found a myth, a legend about a young couple, 14/15 years old and the girl died at very young age, at fifteen. It is a very sad story, but it fitted perfectly to ‘Love You To Death’. ‘Mourning Star’ is about a soldier during the First World War out in the fields, questioning the meaning of all these death and pain. And at the same time in the chorus is a melancholy link to the feeling of not being able to do anything about your own situation.

There are some religious sounding chants in the beginning of ‘Mourning Star’…

Yes, but it is not about religion. There is a line in there, saying something like “turning water into wine”, I realize that I refer to words in the Bible, but I have always done that. It doesn’t mean that the lyric itself is religious. Of course that is a reference to being out in a war and a lot of countries have used God or religion to send orders to get people to go to war. And it is still used.

It was long ago that you did not have to follow a concept. Wasn’t it refreshing?

Absolutely. This is the first non-concept record in four or five years and even ‘One Cold Winter’s Night’ was more of a concept than ‘Ghost Opera’. We were working in a big scheme: first ‘Epica’, then ‘The Black Halo’, then the DVD. Now finally we have done a regular studio album with ten songs and that was it. That made the whole process so easy. It was so refreshing not to worry about lyrics. I think it gave us an extra spark in some way.

A remarkable thing: ten videos are planned for one album; one for every song.

(laughs) Oh that… That’s terrible. That is something that is totally in the planning stage, we will see what happens with us. The thing is, is costs an enormous amount of money. We’ll see…

But I have seen the video of ‘Ghost Opera’. That was the first one, I guess?

It is filmed in Serbia and shows the story of a young opera singer who is attacked and keeps wearing the scars of that assault her whole life. A sad story again.

How many videos are shot now already?

We have ‘Ghost Opera’ obviously and we did ‘The Human Stain’. This one is coming out during the summer.

A lot of touring is coming up again…

Yeah, it has been busy and it looks like it is going to be busy in the future. That’s good.

Are there new countries, new territory you are going to play soon?

No, right now it is enough countries the way it is (laughs). There are always new territories that we like to go to, but there are so many things that it depends on.

The recordings took place once again with your long term friends Sascha Paeth, Miro and Olaf Reitmeier. I once read in an interview that you would like to do it all by yourself in future. Or is that not an issue anymore?

We are the executive producers, me and Thomas. We always decide what the record’s going to be in the end, we’ve always been. If we don’t like the sound, we turn it back. If we want to change anything, we change it. That’s the meaning of executive producers. But of course Sascha and Miro are important people in our career. Since that they also have a clear fingerprint on this record.

You have your own You Tube channel?

Yeah, like MTV. It is like a TV channel, we just see the new releases first.

What about the artwork?

It is done by Mattias Norén and he was also responsible for the DVD cover. We liked what he did on the DVD and we wanted to use him again. His style fits with our music and he did an outstanding job again with the booklet.

Are you still in contact with the guys of Conception?

Yeah, sure, we are still very good friends. Especially me and Tore (guitarist, now in Ark).

Do they still exist?

No, we play live once in a while. We played three concerts in 2005. (They reunited to play at some festivals – Vera) and we might do one or two gigs before Christmas this year. We’ll see, I don’t know.

Never thought about moving to America?

No, not really. I thought about it at some point, but I just like the nature here, the climate, I got my friends and my family here, so I will stay here (smiles).

If you have some news we did not cover, you can say it now…

Well, we are going to play some festivals in the summer. Fields of Rock in the Netherlands is the first one (it was just confirmed when I talked to Khan – Vera), next festival is in Spain. (Zaragossa). In August and September we tour Canada and North America, then comes a European tour again and then we have Japan. So we will be pretty busy this year!

People who buy the limited edition digipack will have an extra track, called ‘The Pendulous Fall’, and a DVD with the video of ‘Ghost Opera’ (the song) made by Ivan Colic and shot in Beograd (Serbia) as well as the making of this video and a special extended booklet. Join the Kamelot fever!


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