Frozen Crown

Milan, 2017

Frozen Crown were put together in Milan in 2017 by guitarist, keyboardist and songwriter Federico Mondelli, with Giada "Jade" Etro on lead vocals. The founding five-piece was completed by guitarist Thalia Bellazecca, bassist Filippo Zavattari and drummer Alberto Mezzanotte. The debut album, The Fallen King, arrived in 2018 on the Italian independent Scarlet Records and set out the fantasy world the band have returned to ever since.

A second record, Crowned in Frost, followed in 2019. Then the group nearly came apart: in January 2021 three of the original members left, citing the difficulties of the pandemic. Mondelli and Etro carried on, recruiting bassist Francesco Zof and drummer Niso Tomasini that same year, and Winterbane was released in 2021 with the new rhythm section in place.

The Scarlet years and the move to Napalm

Four albums in six years on Scarlet — The Fallen King in 2018, Crowned in Frost in 2019, Winterbane in 2021 and Call of the North in 2023 — established the template: fast, melodic, keyboard-lined power metal with Etro's clean vocals over twin guitars, and Mondelli handling most of the writing as well as harsh backing vocals.

In June 2023 the band signed to Napalm Records, the Austrian label that handles most of the European melodic and symphonic metal roster. Their first release for it, War Hearts, came out on 18 October 2024. It was also the first album to feature guitarist Alessia Lanzone, who joined in September 2023 at eighteen.

War Hearts sharpened rather than expanded the sound. Angry Metal Guy rated it 3.5 out of 5, singling out the shift to shorter songs — most a little over four minutes — and calling it the most replayable thing the band had done since the debut, while noting that the simplified writing left fewer of the compositional turns that earlier records had. Lanzone's lead playing was picked out as the record's clearest gain.

A line-up that keeps being rebuilt

Turnover has been a constant. Fabiola "Sheena" Bellomo played guitar from 2021 to 2025. Her replacement, Aleksandra Stamenkovic — also credited as Alexandra Lioness — joined in 2025 and makes her studio debut on the new album, giving Frozen Crown a settled six-piece of Etro, Mondelli, Lanzone, Stamenkovic, Zof and Tomasini.

Tomasini's role has grown beyond the drum stool: he is credited as a writer on the sixth album alongside Etro and Mondelli, the first time the writing has clearly been shared outside the founding pair.

The Legend of the Six Kings

The sixth album, The Legend of the Six Kings, is out on 2 October 2026 through Napalm Records. Ten tracks, and an explicit return to the story begun on The Fallen King in 2018 — darker in tone, and built as a narrative rather than a collection. The band have described the visual world around it, developed with video director Raoul Noise and prop designer Daria Gislon, as sitting between Tolkien's regal aesthetics and Robert E. Howard's brutality. Etro, who has generally sung as the hero, takes a villain's part this time, claiming the throne and the frozen crown of the band's name.

Three tracks were released ahead of it. "The One" came out with a video on 24 June 2026, presented by the band as a new beginning and the wicked side of the group. "Who Wants to Burn in Heaven" followed, and "Reborn" arrived on 28 July 2026, with a statement that the album continues a search for the essential Frozen Crown song by distilling the style into shorter, more direct writing and stripping away frills.

Track five is a power metal reading of the Goo Goo Dolls' "Iris" from 1998 — an outlier on a record otherwise given over to the saga. The album is issued on CD and digitally, in several vinyl editions, and as a wooden boxset limited to 300 copies.

Where they are now

On 24 February 2026, Kamelot announced their Dark Asylum World Tour with Visions of Atlantis as direct support and Frozen Crown opening. Tickets went on sale on 27 February. The North American run started on 28 August in Orlando and finishes on 27 September in Silver Spring, Maryland, taking in roughly twenty cities including New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Toronto and Montreal. It is the band's first time playing in the United States.

A European run follows from late October into November, supporting Beast In Black alongside Sonata Arctica — which puts the band on the road on both continents across the album's release window. Their only headline show of the year was on 13 June in Regensburg, Germany; everything else in 2026 has been a support slot.

The workload is heavy by any measure. Setlist.fm has logged 152 Frozen Crown sets in total, 35 of them in 2024, 30 in 2025 and 19 so far in 2026. The two songs they have played more than any other — 103 times each — are "Kings" and "I Am the Tyrant", both from the first two albums, and both still in the current set.