Poetry for the Poisoned

Poetry for the Poisoned is the ninth album on which KAMELOT layered shadowed melody, symphonic breadth and dramatic choruses to paint a dark, theatrical world. Keeping the outline of heavy guitars, the vocals and keyboards give the songs deep feeling. Under a lineup supported by Oliver Palotai’s keyboards and Casey Grillo’s drums, the sound steps in a more experimental, gloomy direction. Adding a heavier, gloomier color to the established grandeur, it turned out to be the last studio album with Roy Khan on vocals. On “The Great Pandemonium,” “If Tomorrow Came,” “The Zodiac” and “House on a Hill,” aggression and lyricism intersect, and on “Necropolis,” “My Train of Thoughts,” “Seal of Woven Years” and “Once Upon a Time” too, dark lyricism and dramatic arrangement interlock tightly. And the “Poetry for the Poisoned” suite (Parts I–IV) builds a conceptual flow tightly around the contrast from quiet passages to widely opening choruses. Its worldview, where darkness and beauty coexist, is a shadow-rich, important record showing one culmination of the Khan era.