Tracklist:1. Merlin
2. Tintagel
3. The Future King
4. The Sword in the Stone
5. When the Seer Looks Away
6. Branded
7. At Arthur's Court
8. The Otherworld
9. The Purest of Knights
10. Friendship and Love
11. The King's Enchanter
12. Niniane (Lady of the Lake)
13. The Last Battle
14. Avalon
Kayak goes Rock Opera – 8/10
Now Rob Winter left the band and is replaced with soon-to-seem great guitarist Joost Vergoossen, thus leaving Kayak as unrecognizable to the older lineups. The reunion only lasted for one album since almost every lead instrument has seen multiple musicians (except for the keyboards of course). Especially after the estranging Night Vision I bet Kayak wanted to show the fans they were still Kayak and not just a Scherpenzeel/Koopman collaboration, so they took an old idea from the shelve. Remember the LP Merlin from 1981? They decided to take this story, rework all the old concept songs and include lots of new ones as well, thus creating their first rock opera ever. They even started dividing roles among the singers and hired Cindy Oudshoorn as a guest singer to play the role of Morgan LeFay. Promising, isn’t it?
This might all seem like a lame publicity stunt among the fans, but the funny thing is this trick does work and the band has become Kayak again. The fact that opening song “Merlin” is the same track as on the 1981 album is recognizable, albeit that this version is re-recorded and a true old-men’s version. It’s as slow as a snail but has a little more balls to it when it comes to solo guitars. Heerink’s vocals do not reach as powerful as Reekers, but we must not set too many demands and give Heerink a chance on the new songs. “Tintagel” has been transferred from piano ballad to synthesizer-atmospheric track and again lacks the strength of the original. “The Sword in the Stone” is actually a little improved. In the old version’s break we had a few barbarians shouting some words and cheering, but here we have Heerink singing the same words so we can hear what they are in a nice melody. “The King’s Enchanter” has been transferred from medieval panflute rocker to modern synth-guitar rocker with Oudshoorn singing it, which also makes a little more sense when looking at the story. “Niniane” did not change a great deal, except for the higher sound quality and the different vocals. It still holds all the magic it did when first released in 1981. The best thing about the album is that the new tracks have the same medieval atmosphere as the old tracks and mix quite well. Perhaps it was a good thing to change the things changed in the old songs just in order to make them sound better with the new ones.
Now the concept is complete and we finally know how Arthur came to die. The roles are Heerink as Merlin, Oudshoorn as Morgan and Vunderink as Mordred. This results in great duet songs of two enemies such as in “When the Seer Looks Away” or “The Last Battle”. Heerink and Oudshoorn take the roles of Lancelot and Guinevere for one song, which is the sweet little love ballad “Friendship and Love”. Oudshoorn soon proves to be able to sound very scary as Morgan in “When the Seer Looks Away”, as soon as the song explodes halfway. Vunderink gives us a taster of his voice on the fast-paced rocker “Branded”, filled with the anger of Mordred, but it all goes wild in his duet with Merlin in “The Last Battle”, an 8-minute epic with the war of words at first but soon the music will depict a true battle with both guitarists going wild in their solos and the wild themes flying in. The death of Arthur will be ‘celebrated’ in the closer “Avalon”, a very touching ballad which made me weep when heard for the first time. It once again features a duet between Merlin and Morgan, but this time without them being enemies. There are of course some other tracks worth mentioning. “The Otherworld” is another 8-minute epic (how does Kayak manage to get all their long songs last around 8 minutes?) disguised in a mysterious piece of progrock, featuring an intro of at least three minutes. An ode to the great adventures of the Knights of the Round Table is “The Purest of Knights”, featuring this heroic main theme and powerful knight-worthy vocals by our dearest Bert Heerink.
It’s a funny thing, really, how I came across this album for the first time. Someone once let me hear a cassette tape featuring Kayak’s 1981 album Merlin. I really liked it and decided to go and buy it. He never told me there were two versions of Merlin, so I got this one instead. It never disappointed me, except for the speed difference on the title track. Other than that this album is worth the price tag and the name Kayak. This was my first Kayak album, and I really recommend anyone who is curious to start with this one. It gives a good example of the more modern Kayak.
Strongest tracks: “When the Seer Looks Away”, “The Last Battle” and “Avalon”.
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