Epica

Epica is the sixth album on which KAMELOT wielded thick guitars, symphonic color and Roy Khan’s shadowed singing to paint a large story. As the first part of a concept inspired by Goethe’s Faust, centered on the protagonist Ariel’s conflict, the songs advance around melody while moving between quiet passages and grand choruses to build drama. Heaviness and grace join naturally, and the world of the concept dissolves deeply into the flow of the music. On “Center of the Universe,” “The Edge of Paradise,” “Wander” and “Descent of the Archangel,” dramatic development and striking melody join tightly, and on “Farewell,” “A Feast for the Vain,” “On the Coldest Winter Night” and “The Mourning After (Carry On)” too, delicate lyricism and dramatic elation intersect, carefully coloring the concept’s story. Interludes inserted throughout tie the narrative, and through to the closing “III Ways to Epica” the whole is tightly designed as a single epic. As the first half of a grand two-part work paired with the following The Black Halo, it is an important record that became the foundation of the later grand path.