The Expedition

At face value, The Expedition seems like it’d be a good live album. For one thing, you could take songs off the first couple of albums and basically have Roy sing them – much like how Rock in Rio has Bruce singing over the Blaze Bayley material and amplifying them. Then there’s giving the Siege Perilous tracks fuller production, like how Unleashed in the East gave the tracks there a real shot in the arm. It’s like giving that extra bit of polish that makes that trophy really sparkle. I guess the most they could add to the tracks off the then-recently released The Fourth Legacy is more of that live experience. Oh also, a couple of new songs, and a rerecording of an old track. What could possibly go wrong?

Well, not much. Granted, The Fourth Legacy takes up most of the album, and only one song from the Vanderblit duology got the live treatment (although thankfully, someone had the idea to rerecord another song from that era). Interestingly, the one that made it to this CD… is “Call of the Sea”. Unfortunately, the choice to include that song and not “Eternity” is the only thing interesting about it. Having fuller production and Roy’s vocals only elevates this mediocre song a little bit, but it still ends up as background noise because the riffs are basically the most mediocre USPM riffs ever. This especially stands in contrast with the two songs it’s sandwiched between – namely, “The Fourth Legacy” and “Nights of Arabia”, two of the greatest songs Kamelot have ever written to this day. It’s a shame, since “Call of the Sea” has more crowd interaction, with Roy encouraging them to sing one of the choruses along with him. If there is a song that does positively represent the Vanderblit albums, it’s the rerecording of the underrated classic, “We Are Not Separate”. Having Roy provide more powerful and tighter vocals gives the song… well, more power. Not to mention a bit better production giving it more bite.

On a philosophical level, it would probably be more interesting if it was just rerecordings of old shit – stuff from the first two albums but now with Roy on the vocals, and the stuff on Siege Perilous getting sharper production. Maybe get people more interested in the older stuff. I’d liken this theoretical album to Arch Enemy’s The Root of All Evil where they took stuff off their first three albums, modern up the production and have Angela Gossow do the vocals. But what we did get was a live album with two new songs and a rerecording. The new songs were pretty underwhelming, to say the least. “We Three Kings” could’ve been a rousing instrumental with fucking orchestras and shit, but given how it always seemed to be building up to saying that wound up having no payoff, it sounded more like a glorified intro piece to “One Day” – not to be confused with “One Day I’ll Win” because that would’ve been more interesting than this snoozer of a ballad. Sure, the vocals have some emotional depth to them that accentuate the harp strings and violins, but it basically goes nowhere and produces very minimal amounts of atmosphere. These are elements that would be built upon on Karma, making these two songs more like proofs of concept rather than fully fledged songs in and of themselves.

So here with The Expedition, you have yourself a couple of decent new songs, a stellar rerecording and a good live tracklist – albeit one that skews heavily in favor of The Fourth Legacy with not much in the way of “a live experience without being there”. It is well done, but as an overall package, this is definitely for completionists only.

I don't see a point to buying this album. I'm sure they're a lot of fun to see live, but Kamelot really do things by the book on this release. All these songs sound pretty much exactly like their respective studio versions, just with crowd noise added in and not as heavy since there's only one guitarist. Problem is, the live feel isn't quite captured, so basically if you already have an album or two of theirs with Khan on vocals, you don't need this album. There's simply nothing special about it, the performances are perfectly note-for-note and very tight but it all sounds too polished, whether they're just an accurate live band or overdubs were used, it doesn't sound exciting...even the 3 studio tracks aren't so bad, One Day and We Three Kings are pretty cool, but not worth the price of the CD. (And while it's a minor thing, and to be expected with many bands, Khan's minimal stage banter is pretty silly..."Let me see you rock!", so don't expect huge amounts of crowd interaction). Only real live highlight of this one for me was hearing "Call of the Sea" with Khan on vocals, since originally it was done with their previous vocalist, and this version is much better. And the added drums on Desert Reign are very cool, but that's only an intro track to Nights of Arabia. Basically, a few good songs do not an album make. I can't fault them for their flawless performance, it's not that I'm looking for live mistakes, there's just no real reason for me to put this one on instead of a studio album. Maybe it's a good intro to the band if you're new to them, but unless you're a diehard fan, this album is hardly essential.