Live Report - Kamelot w/ Seven Witches & Penetrator - November 20th 2005, Toronto Canada
Metal Reviews

Release year: 0
Reviewed by Crims

Every body has their bands that helped them get into a certain style of Metal or style of music in general. When it comes to Power Metal that band for me was Kamelot. It was early 1999 and I downloaded a song called Nights Of Arabia. I didn’t know what to think of it at first as I had never heard anything like it despite listening to Thrash and Traditional Metal for many years prior. I decided to give it more spins and with each listen it grew more and more on me to the point where I was listening to it three times daily for many weeks thereafter. I eventually bought The Fourth Legacy, naturally, and the rest is history as they say. Kamelot has consistently blown me away with every release from The Fourth Legacy onwards, and even though The Black Halo took a while to grow on me, it too has become one of my favorite if not my favorite release this year. So when I found out that Kamelot would be coming to Toronto, suffice to say, I was ecstatic! Though I shouldn’t be surprised as it seems Power Metal is equaling Death Metal in the number of concerts here in the past few years, I never thought Kamelot would come so soon. But here they were and playing with the awesome Seven Witches no less, who I saw back in February or March of this year I believe. Let it be known I am a self confessed Kamelot fan-boy. From The Fourth Legacy onward I don’t think there is a song I don’t like from them, so keep that in mind for this live report.

This show was at Lee’s Palace, voted number one club to see an Alternative rock concert at in the Toronto area… by who I don’t know. It’s not exactly known as a powerhouse for Metal shows but there are many things that make it better than The Opera House, which is known as a power house for Metal shows here. I won’t bore you non-Torontonians with the details but the single best feature is a 6 foot high stage as opposed to the 4 foot high stage at the Opera House, whereby you can never see anybody’s legs. Not that you’re looking at the legs of your favorite Metal bands very often but it’s still annoying. Anyway, the opening band was Penetrator. They were the obligatory local opening act for this concert. I must say they were a solid excellent opening band. They play traditional Heavy Metal with an emphasis on heavy. Much heavier than their counterparts in Europe, but there is a definite 80’s sound to their music as well. The band has decided to take the Priest route of traditional Metal as opposed to Maiden, quite blatantly as well, as one track had rhythms and riffs similar to Leather Rebel. Regardless their set was solid with some memorable tracks. A lot more memorable than most local opening acts lately. The performance of the band was quite good with the guitarist being the most charismatic as he was fun to watch. He didn’t have long hair so he couldn’t really head bang properly but he definitely made up for it with his stage movement and facial expressions. One problem with a lot of bands like this in Europe is the music is good but the singer isn’t. Thankfully this wasn’t the case here as the singer was excellent. Singing in a very high, Halford/Lizzy Borden styled tone, he was most impressive. He even provided convincing Death Metal vocals on the last track which I think was their best. I’ll be picking up their new CD when it comes out and hopefully I’ll get a review up of it because this was solid Traditional Heavy Metal with a slight modern touch at places.

Next up was Seven Witches. Penetrator did a good job of setting the mood and Seven Witches ran with it. While I was very distraught to hear the legendary James Rivera left the band (thankfully I got to see him live) I am a huge fan of Alan Tecchio. As good as Rivera is, in fact, he’s one of the best, I think Tecchio is better suited to the bands look and style. Much in the way Wade Black fit in really well, and speaking of which, Tecchio did quite the Wade Black impersonation on Metal Tyrant, but chose to sing the Rivera tracks in his own style, which was a wise choice. The set list wasn’t as long as the previous one in Toronto which had a ton of stuff from Passage To The Other Side (my favorite from the Witches), even though it was on the tour to promote Year Of The Witch (this time around we only got three songs from Passage instead of five.) They did hit the crowd hard with the two fan favorites, Metal Tyrant and Mental Messiah, though, at which point the crowd went completely bonkers. Other highlights included two new tracks. I’ve been anticipating their new CD for quite a while and when I read it was mostly mid-paced I was seriously worried. However, Seven Witches fans worry not! The new songs completely killed and the crowd got into them immediately. Yes they are mid-paced, but they are heavy as hell, with crushing rhythms and spurts of double bass to emphasize the riff chugging. Yes, it is a slightly different style but it works surprisingly well. Overall it was an enjoyable set. It wasn’t as memorable as the Rivera fronted show I saw but that’s not to take anything away from Tecchio, he just has a different approach on stage. Besides, I think he would look rather funny if he came out in Rivera’s cape and elbow length leather gloves. Also, Jack Frost was entertaining as always. He’s actually one of the most entertaining guitarists I’ve seen on stage to date.

Next up was Kamelot, obviously and as if there was any doubt, as much as everyone seemed to enjoy Seven Witches, the majority of the people were there to see Kamelot. The lights went out and some excellent classical intro music came on and the hands rose in the air and the cheers started. Slowly the band came out on stage and then the lights went on and bam! They hit you with Center Of The Universe. Then just before the vocal sections come in Roy Kahn comes on stage and any doubts that I had that Kamelot may not sound as good live as they do in the studio were put to rest immediately. Kahn sounds every bit as good live as he does in the studio, and though not everybody may like his style, he is an excellent singer that has a tremendous range. The set mostly focused on The Black Halo, which strangely left out the awesome title track, but featured Memento Mori (only the second time they played this live apparently) as well as When The Lights Are Down (this actually sounded more intense and heavier live). The rest of the set was mostly evenly spread throughout the previous three CDs, with three songs from Karma and three from Epica, with one from The Fourth Legacy (if my memory serves me correct). That song from The Fourth Legacy was of course Nights Of Arabia and they even played the Desert Reign intro which set the tone perfectly. This song was something special for me live since as mentioned it got me into Power Metal. It seemed to be a general fan favorite as well as I think the crowd went the craziest during this song. The band also played only two ballads one of which was Abandonded which is one of their best in my opinion. Kamelot even included The Spell in their set list, which is perhaps what current day Queensryche would sound like if they didn’t wuss out.

Kamelot had a great sound overall and their bass player was very entertaining while Kahn’s stage performance is like his vocal performance: laid back but subtly powerful. As an added bonus they had a female opera singer come out and do Simone Simons parts from the The Black Halo songs. She was very easy on the eyes and sounded very good, though her mic wasn’t turned up high enough. Disappointingly though, and possibly the only bad part of the concert, was that she didn’t come out and do the female part in Nights Of Arabia… odd. Lastly, Thom Youngblood handled Shagrath’s parts in March Of The Mephisto for those curious, and he actually did decent extreme vocals (perhaps a future sound for Kamelot; Youngblood doing growl vocals with Kahn’s clean singing… ok maybe not).

As you can tell I really, really enjoyed myself. With being such a huge fan of Kamelot I probably would have been disappointed if all the pieces didn’t fall into place, but everything did. I was in a metal zone of sorts, mesmerized by the music and that’s the best feeling you can have at a Metal concert. The fact that Penetrator and Seven Witches opened was the icing on the cake. If you’re even a casual fan of Kamelot go see them on this tour if you can, they’ll blow you away!

Killing Songs :
Crims quoted
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