Recently, I had the opportunity to speak with Roy Khan, vocalist of the symphonic power metal band, Kamelot, about the release of their new album, Ghost Opera (see the review in this month's issue).

Partha(MR): Thanks for calling, I’m excited to be able to talk to you.

Roy Khan of Kamelot (RK): A very important part of my job.

MR: How long has this press tour been going on for you.

RK: Aaaaaah, it was started in April, beginning of April on the tour and then we….every night for two weeks, between the first two legs here, and I’ve been doing this every night for two weeks, and then I’m going to do it for another week. I get to talk a lot about my self.

MR: So when’s the tour in the US start? You’re not coming here until August I think.

RK: Yeah, we’re just about to set up a show in Florida on the 15th of August, which is going to be the first one. We’re going to do that right in the middle of rehearsals, and we’re going tour for a month or so.

MR: Looking at the schedule, I think I’m going to have to make a trip down to Chicago area.

RK: Oh, You’re from Chicago?

MR: No, I’m from Wisconsin, Madison, a couple two hours away.

RK: I think we played Chicago last time, or Mokena or something.

MR: Mokena, that’s what’s listed here. Not a bad trip. So, Ghost Opera, huh? Personally, I’m thinking there’s a little bit of a darker edge on this one than what you’ve done previously. A conscious decision, or…?

RK: No, not really, the band, you know, or the song just come naturally in a way. We don’t really approach the songwriting as analytically as a lot of people seem to think. It’s slightly more monotonous than the previous records we’ve done. And the lyrical themes are mainly dealing with death and despair and hopeless love. Not that we haven’t dealt with those themes in the past, but there’s probably….more of it on this record than on any other record. The result is a more dark edge, I think.

MR: It seems like there’s more of a, to use a word, opera touch, a little more, not dramatic…all you music is really grandiose, glorious stuff, so…

RK: It’s very important for us to maintain the sound that we’ve found, but it’s also very important for us to always try to change slightly, to stretch in different directions with every release, so that we manage to keep this whole thing interesting for ourselves.

MR: So that you don’t accused of doing the same thing every time?

RK: No, absolutely not. But more than anything else, it’s to keep ourselves happy. I mean, if we were…if we wanted to, we could do the same thing over and over again.

MR: Like, Karma, Part XII? Looking at the liner notes, this is the first time that you’ve had an official keyboardist in nearly a decade. Why was that decision to bring Oliver in officially, rather than as a hired gun?

RK: Well, I mean, the whole keyboardist situation in Kamelot has been pretty turbulent, let’s put it that way. We had Dave on Siege Perilous, and then we had like, one, two, three, at least three different guys with us on tour. And, it’s just nice to have one team to work with, and that way we can develop, and know each other, and so on. Oliver can in here right between Black Halo and this record.

MR: You’ve had time to get to know him….

RK: We quite instantly understood that this was our guy. He didn’t get in early enough to be able to take part in the songwriting. He’s a pretty good songwriter, so I’m pretty we’re going to use some of his stuff in the future. And also, there’s the awkward situation of Miro still doing orchestral arrangements and choirs and stuff. But Oliver is first and foremost a very nice addition to our live performance. Obviously as keyboard in Kamelot you have to have a slight overview over classical playing, and there’s everything a keyboarder can think of that needs to be done in Kamelot. There’s shredding solos, there’s pads, you have to have…you have to know your equipment. There’s a lot of classical stuff, there’s a lot of piano, and rhythmically, it’s also quite tricky in some parts. He masters that flawlessly. In addition, he’s a good performer, and he’s also a person that works well with us socially, which is very as we spend so much time together.

MR: Definitely a good performer. I was looking at the bonus DVD with the album, with the Ghost Opera video, the making of. Very interesting, you always see the making of extras on movie DVDs, and see how much work goes into it. He’s doing the whole headbanging, circular hair thing.

RK: (laughs)

MR: So when it comes to making a video and you’re standing with a blue wall behind you and a green wall in front of you, is it hard to generate the same emotion that you would when you’re getting the live feedback from an audience?

RK: Well, it’s not quite the same, but of course you know, being an actor is a small part of what we’re doing. I guess we have good imaginations. These are all roles we’ve practiced for a few years now, so it’s not that hard. Sometimes it’s a little bit awkward. It depends on what the director asks you to do. I have to speak for myself, I don’t really have a problem with doing that. Acting is a very important part of being a lead singer, at least I think it should be, and I take that quite seriously. But it’s pretty cool to see the final result, when you know you’ve been there in that blue room or green room, and then you see the thing when it’s finished, it’s pretty amazing what those guys can do.

MR: Especially with the way that the making of video is constructed, where it showed you in front of the blue room, and they just wiped it, and the choir showed up.

RK: It’s pretty cool, huh?

MR: It looks fantastic. You can’t tell it’s all digital.

RK: I think a lot of people thought it was shot in an old opera house…

MR: With a live choir.

RK: …which was the intention. It’s really amazing what these guys can do with the equipment today. 

MR: A couple of questions about the video. It starts out with a vinyl record with "Kamelot – Ghost Opera." Are you aware of any vinyl releases, you know, collector’s edition releases. I’d love to get my hands on something like that.

RK: (chuckling) We’ve talked about it. We’ve been talking about it. Personally, I’m actually considering getting an LP Player. But I guess that’s up to the record label. They have to feel that it makes sense. Actually, we haven’t brought that up, but that’s something that we might do in the future.

MR: How about the content of the video, is that something that you guys came up with, or the director?

RK: Well, the story is ours. Of course, I mean, when you give the director a story, he might come with a suggestion of change, or he might want to do a little thing here and there different. But the story, more or less as you see it is ours, and it’s based on the lyrics of course.

MR: Speaking of stories, this is the first disc you’ve done in five years that isn’t a concept album.

RK: Yes, that’s right.

MR: Was it easier to write without the anchor, or without the framework in place?

RK: It wasn’t easier, but it took more time….I mean it took less time, sorry. But it’s not any easier, especially not with a record like The Black Halo behind us. The only thing we knew when we sat down this time is that we’re not going to do concept, that’s the only thing that we knew when we sat down. On Epica and The Black Halo, we always had the lyrics, or at least the idea…and it’s nice to have that framework around you.

MR: Hard to stick to a story, but just as hard when you don’t have that red line connecting the events.

RK: Last time, the lyrics were maybe more difficult, let’s put it that way, and this time, we just sat down and started playing keyboard and guitars, and threw out our musical ideas without having to worry about lyrics, which was very refreshing, we hadn’t worked like this in five years. Then in turn we let the music inspire the lyrics much more directly than we’ve ever done before. I think this quote unquote new approach was something that led us to, you know, do the songs different from how we’ve done them the last five years.

MR: In terms of the lyrics, who is, I just see the liner notes, "all songs written by Kamelot," are the lyrics…

RK: Most of the lyrics are written by me. I mean, me and Tom write all the music together, at least this time mainly on keyboard and guitars, And most of it was written during a 12-13 day period. Of course, Tom also has ideas for themes, and he might come up with a title, and sometimes, occasionally he writes a full lyric. But mainly, I’m responsible for the lyrics.

MR: Did you guys get together and hole up in a little closet somewhere to come up with these songs in two weeks, or are you writing, wherever, Norway, and he’s in Florida?

RK: He came to Norway. We sat in the very room that I’m sitting in right now, most of the time. We also spent a couple of days in a cabin up in the mountains, but we basically drank wine up there. You can write a song in many different ways. In the past, one song gets written on the bus, or during rehearsal, or you know. Tom may have written a song, or I may have written a song. Which also happened this time, but most of the songs were written with me and him on keyboards and guitars  respectively.

MR: Going back to the video, I just saw a e-mail from SPV the other day that Ghost Opera had been picked up by Headbanger’s Ball on MTV. Pretty exciting.

RK: Well, I got an e-mail note about that just today. I know they’ve been working on it for a while, I’m really glad that it’s getting on there now. We were extremely disappointed last time when March of Mephisto didn’t make it, which was a true pity. But there’s only certain things that you have control over. You do your best and make a record as good as you can and cross your finger that everyone else does their jobs.

MR: More exposure for Kamelot, so that’s good to hear.

RK: The important thing for us is that the label make sure that people hear about us. Not that I have any….that you know, fame and fortune is not a goal for any of us. We would like as many people possibly to get into our music, and listen to what we have to say, was with every other artist. Unfortunately you’re dependent on, you know, a lot of business people…

MR: The machine working together.

RK: Exactly. But we’re on a good label now, and the job they’re doing is really good, so we’re happy.

MR: Glad to hear that, you guys deserve the notice. Let me ask you a couple of questions about your guest artists. I see Amanda Sommerville credited in the notes, the beautiful voice behind, "Love you to Death," and a couple others, I’m not familiar with her.

RK: Amanda has been in the backing choir on a couple of albums. She also did the backing vocals on Abandoned on The Black Halo.

MR: I missed that.

RK: She has a stunningly beautiful voice, and we always want to use here, or expose her a little more like we did this time on "Love you to Death, " and she did a great job, and we’re very happy about the result.

MR: As a Dimmu Borgir fan, I was pretty amused by the Shagrath cameo on the previous disc.

RK: Oh yeah, that was really cool.

MR: Any chance of a reciprocal cameo, give Vortex a run for his money on the clean vocals?

RK: (chuckling) Maybe. I don’t know, Shagrath had a very specific role to fill on The Black Halo. He was portraying the true face of evil on that record. We normally don’t throw people in there to have done it. Sometimes, if people are working in the studio at the same time as we are. Like, Simone (Simons) was down there the time while we were working on our record.

MR: From Epica?

RK: Yeah, from Epica. And she, so we asked her, I mean she has a beautiful voice and a great personality, so we said why not, and asked her to throw down a couple of line on Blucher.

MR: What’s that song about anyway? I’ve been trying to puzzle it out.

RK: Everyone’s been asking about that. Everyone who’s not German or Norwegian asks about that. It was a heavy cruiser during the second World War. It was the ship that led the convoy of warships up the fjord of Oslo on the day of the invasion of Norway. It was sunk a couple of hours before it hit Oslo by two torpedoes, and the 1400 first time at war young German soldiers went down with it. It actually burnt up in the lake of oil that was surrounding the ship as it went down. A pretty tragic and dramatic story. And the story in our song is about a young German soldier standing on the bridge just before this happens, and he’s sending thoughts to his fiancée in Germany, and wondering if she’s thinking about him the way he’s thinking about her in the last minutes of his life.

MR: Thanks for clearing that up. I was trying to figure that out. That’s one of my favorite songs on the disc.

RK: Oh yeah, I love that song. I love that song, too.

MR: You’re breaking out darker vocals, too. Is that processed, or do you have a deeper singing voice?

RK: You’re talking about the pre-chorus? That static, really deep voice? A lot of people call it the robotic voice, which is a compliment because that’s how I tried to sing it. But they think it’s processed, but it’s not. There’s reverb and there’s delay. I’m singing very statically. It kinda annoys me. Some people say they don’t like it, they want to hear my voice the way it is. But that’s just the way it’s sung. But in a way it’s a compliment.

MR: Can I ask you a few personal questions?

RK: Yeah sure.

MR: Do you ever get sick of the Star Trek references?

RK: The what?

MR: The Star Trek references.

RK: The Star….Trek?

MR: You don’t know what I’m talking about?

RK: No.

MR: In the second Star Trek movie, the one that’s subtitled, "The Wrath of Khan," near the end, Captain Kirk is outsmarted by Khan, and as that character gets away, Kirk lets out an anguished yell. 

RK: I’ve heard of the Wrath of Khan, but, I had no idea that where it’s from.

MR: So when everyone in America is yelling "KHAAAAAAN," at you, that’s their Captain Kirk imitation.

RK: I’ve never heard that, but I’ll recognize it now that you’ve told me about it.

MR: I wasn’t able to get down to ProgPower when you guys played, but I heard everyone was doing that.

RK: (chuckling) No I’ve actually never heard anyone do that.

MR: Let’s me try your objectivity there, then. Every interview I see, the subject pretty much automatically says, this latest album is the best thing we’ve ever done. Can you say that about Ghost Opera?

RK: Yeah, in a way…I mean, we kind of set a standard with The Black Halo…

MR: …that’s pretty tough to beat…

RK: ...that’s hard to beat. I’m not saying that we won’t, but for me, Ghost Opera is as good. It’s just…it’s shorter, and not as elaborate, but the stuff that’s on there, for sure, six or seven of the songs are amongst the absolute best we’ve ever done, in my opinion. Of course you tend to, since you’re the musician and the maker of the music, you tend to be obsessed with what you’re doing at the moment, which might be part of the reason. But I really think that 20 years from now I’m still going to think that Ghost Opera was a really really great record. That’s another thing that I find a little bit  annoying, when I see people rating Ghost Opera lower because it wasn’t as good as Black Halo. They should rate it compared to every other band out there in our genre. I mean, what should I say? We always do absolutely everything we can to make the record both interesting to ourselves, and hopefully to our fans and journos out there. You can’t really do any more than that. We put all the money that we have, er, we put a lot of money into it, a lot of money into it and a lot of energy and time and passion into it. We believe in products, or…that’s not a word I like….we believe in….it’s art, but it’s still a product, since it’s sold...that are long lasting, and we want to be proud of this when we’re 20 years older.

MR: I think you should be proud of this record, it’s very solid. It’s coming, obviously, from a different place than the Black Halo, too, that was a concept album, part II of the Faust story. 

RK: Yeah.

MR: Here, you’re kind of starting over…not to say starting over, but it’s a different product, as you say, than Black Halo is supposed to be, and it’s an excellent record.

RK: Absolutely. Which was a goal and a very natural result, of course, considering the approach we took this time.

MR: So…let’s me toss a couple of more personal questions at you. Your own vocal influences, where are you coming from as an artist?

RK: I started playing the clarinet when I was 8-9 years old, and we always had a piano around the house, always played around on that. And then I started playing, or taking piano lessons when I was 12. I always liked singing though, I just never, you know, thought about singing in a band, or making singing my profession. But I really liked certain styles of singing, and like everybody else I sang in the shower, and as a teenager I sang in front of my mirror in the bathroom, and pretended I was, I don’t know, can’t remember. But it wasn’t until I tried to attend a musical school with piano as my main instrument, and I didn’t get in, because as I said, I started playing piano when I was like 12-13 years old, and there are people that had played the piano since they were two or three, so I didn’t have any chance at all. But they asked me if I liked singing, and I told them yes. So it was quite coincidental. I said OK, I’ll apply, I changed my application and changed my main instrument to vocals instead of piano, and then they basically on the spot gave me a place at the school. Because they need male singers, basically. That was my first encounter with classical music, or classical singing. A lot of people encouraged me, and told me I had a lot of talent, and I should go further with it. And after that year, I took a couple of years of private lessons with a very famous opera teacher, or classical teacher here in Norway. And then I joined my old band Conception, and my teacher told me that I, you know, "You gotta choose," you can’t do these two things at the same time.

MR: The opera and the rock?

RK: Yeah, because the ways of singing are quite different. The choice was pretty easy for me, because I always dreamt about being in a band, or at least those last three-four years, and finally I found a band that I really liked, and I could take a part in the songwriting, and they were really talented. And opera was in a way kind of stuff, the form of the opera. And also the audience sitting in suits, tuxedos, clapping, not like me. So I went with the heavy guitars, and never looked back.

MR: Funny how things work out, huh?  I put out a note to friends, see if there was anything they wanted to ask, and everyone who replied wanted to know is there any chance for Conception ever coming back? I saw an interview that you did maybe 5 years ok, where you said, ok, it’s on hiatus, but since then, Kamelot has blown up….

RK: Well, the chances are quite slim, I’ve got to be honest with you. We’re talking about doing some more live gigs in December, actually. And we also did like a small reunion here, in Atlanta in the US, and two gigs in Norway two years ago. But we never really talked about doing another studio record, that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense for me. Musically, artistically, I’m 110% satisfied in Kamelot. And the other guys are extremely busy, too. I don’t want to put a lot of time and energy into something that everybody can’t work full force on. But as I said, we might want to do some more live gigs, and maybe a live record….and maybe with one song, maybe we enter the studio and do one track just for the fun of it, you never know.

MR: Well, as a fan, I’ll always have Parallel Minds to keep me, that was one of my favorite records from the mid-90s.

RK: I’m still extremely proud of everything I did with Kamelot…no, with Conception…but you get to a point where... I travel so much, I’m so much away from home, it’s getting to a point where it’s quite a bit of a burden on my family. You gotta make sure that what you do is…anything I do I want to do right, and to do Conception right would just take too much time.

MR: I totally understand.

RK: I’m talking about a studio record, of course.

MR: Of course. Let me throw a couple more things at you. Ok, so, this is the first time I’ve ever done an interview, but I always thought, whenever I interview a frontman for the first time I have to ask this question: So, how long did it take you to learn, in the live setting to ignore that one guy in the front row who is very enthusiastic, but has no sense of rhythm whatsoever, and is headbanging completely off kilter.

RK: (laughing) No, that doesn’t bother me too much. Nah, not really. When I’m  singing, I pretty much don’t think at all. I just sing, and my body moves, and I’m kinda gone. I’m pretty trancey when I’m on stage.

MR: A professional trance?

RK: Yeah, in a way. I’m just kidding. I really dive into myself when I’m singing. If anything, I might be a bit thrown off by a funny comment between the songs, but during the songs, there’s nothing in the world….

MR: You’re locked in.

RK: Exactly.

MR: Well, that’s pretty much all I had.

RK: Cool questions.

MR: I hope it was not just same old, same old, I know if you going for like a month straight doing these press things, it can get pretty repetitive for you, huh?

RK: Yeah, but it’s a very important part of my job though, and it’s also important…what you say about what you’re doing and who you are is also part of the creation of the band, in a way, and of yourself as an artist. And I like talking, it’s actually quite enjoyable. I don’t really have a big problem with it. It takes a lot of time, of course. As I mentioned earlier, we travel a lot, but even when I’m home, I’m not really home, I’m either on the phone, or I’m sitting, working in my studio. It’s quite sick, actually. I’ve got a very understanding girlfriend, so that’s cool.

MR: I’m definitely appreciative of stuff you’ve done with both Conception and now Kamelot. 

RK: Oh, thanks, thanks.

MR: Definitely think you should, with the Black Halo and now Ghost Opera, you should pick up more fans now for sure.

RK: It’s going really good these days, and the really cool thing is that it seems like things are moving in the US. If there’s one country in the world I want to sell a lot of records, it’s the US. But I don’t want to compromise on my style of songwriting. Or, I don’t want to…both me and Tom, what we want to do, the most important thing for us is to keep things interesting for ourselves. We don’t want to adapt to a certain trend or style. The band is going to develop from album to album, hopefully, and hopefully at some point, we will have the right back up from our label, and the time is right, and the people are ready. We are already, you know, at a level where we’re way beyond the point of satisfaction as far as artist and musicians go.

MR: I’m glad to hear that, as a far of your band, as well as the general symphonic metal style.

RK: That’s great, man.

MR: Thank you very much for your time, I appreciate it.

RK: My pleasure. So, see you at, what the name of the club again?

MR: The Pearl Room.

RK: Pearl Room.

MR: I’ll be there.

RK: Yup, cool.