In prog rock, there's hard prog and there's something like very mellow rock music with positive ambitions and a virtuostic underpinning. Camel are ear-friendly but expressively indulgent, in a genre where taking your time to build a theme and to work through a series of instrumentals that are just for the hell of it either breathtaking in sudden distance or inspiring in development of idea in a coherence with the musical symbolism of the work's complexity of underlying modes and harmonies, in itself, is not considered abnormal. Themes become interactors to subthemes which return to a form of their original conflict, powering a layer of abstractions upon which a calculation is made in the next iteration. Although these are long songs they do not pass quickly or slowly, but in a careful pace allow their music in its fiery excess and virtuosity to cover only the ground it needs.

The playing is not as demonstrative as the pornographic rockstar shredders of the 1980s, with a softly understated power which contravails within a mutual opposition circle of internal themes cycling through evolutions as songs repeat and return to vital ideas. Its power comes from ability to compose a lengthy dialogue in melody, and the ability to play it with a professionalism and desire that is rare in most who have to bear the burden of showier musicianship. Vocals are soft-intoned singing that is correct but understated from an anonymity to its friendliness, but perform acrobatics in pacing to the instrumentals passing simultaneously. Themes are darker at times, and yet reboundingly vibrant and happy in others, showing the range of this band and their conception of music emotion in music. Logical but lucidly emotive, the music of Camel shows progressive rock at a stage of transition to its elemental concept of art.