Kamelot

Tampa, 1987, and a letter changed to dodge a record shop

Guitarist Thomas Youngblood started the band in Tampa, Florida, in 1987, spelling it Camelot after the Kennedy White House. The K was swapped in during 1991 to separate the group from a local record shop trading under the same name. Two albums followed on Noise Records — Eternity in 1995 and Dominion in 1997 — and neither troubled a chart; the label-era releases up to 2003 left little trace in the published chart data.

The decisive change was a hire. Norwegian singer Roy Khan arrived in 1998 for Siége Perilous and quickly became a co-songwriter rather than a voice for hire. That partnership, more than any label push, is what turned a regional Florida power metal act into a band with a European audience.

The Faust pair, and the catalogue the band is still measured against

The Fourth Legacy in 1999 and Karma in 2001 set the template: fast, orchestrated power metal with Khan's near-operatic phrasing sitting above it. Then came the two records that still define the group. Epica, in 2003, opened a two-part rock opera about a character named Ariel, drawn from Goethe's Faust; The Black Halo closed it on 15 March 2005 through Steamhammer, with Simone Simons of Epica, Shagrath of Dimmu Borgir and Jens Johansson of Stratovarius among the guests. It reached 24 in Sweden and 41 in Japan, and its standing has only hardened with time — Loudwire placed it third in a 2026 ranking of the greatest progressive power metal albums.

Ghost Opera followed in 2007, charting at 61 in Germany, 29 in Sweden and 35 in Finland. Poetry for the Poisoned, in 2010, hit 32 in Germany and 74 on the Billboard 200, the band's first real American chart showing. It was also the end of the Khan era: he left in April 2011 after illness made touring impossible, which left the band with the hardest problem in this genre — replacing a singer whose voice was the brand.

Karevik, and fourteen years of steady escalation

The answer was announced on 22 June 2012: Tommy Karevik of the Swedish progressive band Seventh Wonder, who had already appeared as a guest vocalist during Khan's final run of shows. He took the job as co-songwriter too, and the commercial line went up rather than down. Silverthorn arrived later in 2012, Haven in 2015 reached 14 in Germany and gave the band a number one on the US hard rock albums chart, and The Shadow Theory in 2018 peaked at 13 in Germany.

The Awakening, released on 17 March 2023 on Napalm Records, came after a five-year wait — the longest gap between two Kamelot albums — and introduced drummer Alex Landenburg on record. Produced by Sascha Paeth with the band, it reached 9 in Germany, 27 on the US Billboard current albums chart and 2 on the US and Canadian current hard music charts. Blabbermouth gave it 8/10 and Metal Hammer five stars out of seven. Its singles ran from One More Flag in the Ground in January 2023 to NightSky as late as March 2024. In September 2025 the band went the other way and looked backwards, issuing Ascension (1995–1998), a box set of the remastered early albums.

Dark Asylum: fifteen tracks inside RavenHill

Dark Asylum, the fourteenth studio album, was released on 28 August 2026 through Napalm Records: fifteen tracks, 51 minutes and 15 seconds, produced by Sascha Paeth with the band and mixed and mastered by Jacob Hansen. The setting is RavenHill Asylum, a neo-Victorian institution where, in the band's framing, science, faith and madness uneasily coexist. Youngblood has described the record as a descent into darkness that turns into a journey of awakening; Karevik talks about the duality of human nature and holding on to sanity in a cold world. Youngblood has also been blunt that the thing has a rock opera vibe, which is a fair description of how the fifteen pieces interlock.

Three singles led it out: Ashen World on 2 July 2026, Godlike Alchemy on 29 July, and Sanctuary the day before release. The guest list runs to roughly eleven names, including Tobias Sammet of Edguy and Avantasia, Clémentine Delauney of Visions of Atlantis and the Chilean singer Ignacia Fernández. Commercially it performed as the band's records usually do — strongest in the Nordics and Germany, with 7 in Finland, 8 on the German rock and metal albums chart and 10 on both the Swedish physical chart and the UK rock and metal chart.

Reviews have been warm without being uncritical. Tuonela Magazine rated the opening trio of Ashen World, Dark Asylum and Sanctuary as the catchiest material, singled out Ivy, My Dear as the album's most introspective moment, and reckoned Karevik sounds less boxed in by the band's formula than before — while arguing the back half drags and that the folk-leaning Beneath the Moon (Tunglið) sits awkwardly against everything round it. Other outlets have put the album at the top of their scales. The consensus is development rather than reinvention, pushed further towards symphonic metal than any previous Kamelot record.

Where the band stands in October 2026

The Dark Asylum World Tour was announced in February 2026 and opened on album release day, 28 August, at Hard Rock Live in Orlando. The North American leg ran 23 shows to the Fillmore Silver Spring on 27 September, with Austrian symphonic act Visions of Atlantis and the Italian power metal band Frozen Crown supporting throughout, taking in the Fillmore in San Francisco, First Avenue in Minneapolis, MTELUS in Montreal and the Palladium Times Square in New York.

Next on the calendar is KamFest, a two-night event at O13 in Tilburg on 30 and 31 October 2026, with a different bill each evening: Xandria, Leaves' Eyes and Elegy on the first, Blackbriar, Exit Eden and Temperance on the second. The European headline leg then runs from 1 to 22 November across 18 venues — London, Manchester, Oberhausen, Pratteln, Lyon, Stuttgart, Kraków, Warsaw, Zagreb, Budapest, Belgrade, Trezzo sull'Adda, Padova, Toulouse, Barcelona and Madrid, where it ends — with Exit Eden as special guests and Temperance opening.

In September 2026 the band added a second European leg for March 2027, tickets on sale from 25 September: Osnabrück on 5 March through Groningen, Antwerp, Aarhus, Malmö, Gothenburg, Stockholm, Oslo, Cologne, Hamburg and Regensburg to Brno on 20 March, with the Swedish band Cyhra in direct support. Youngblood frames the routing as deliberate restraint — touring where it makes sense, in a way that keeps a balance — and notes the band has cancelled a tour only once, around fifteen years ago, during the line-up upheaval.

The show: a throne, a keytar and two guest singers

On the 2026 run the headline set has been sixteen songs plus a two-song encore, or nineteen items counting the drum and keyboard solos, which puts it comfortably beyond the ninety-minute mark. Sanctorium functions as the overture before Ashen World starts the set properly, and the main body alternates new material — Dark Asylum, Godlike Alchemy, Sanctuary, Ivy, My Dear — with Karma, Revolution, Rule the World and Liar Liar (Wasteland Monarchy). Veil of Elysium closes the main set; March of Mephisto and Sacrimony (Angel of Afterlife) form the encore.

The staging reads as a gothic asylum: a throne centre stage, drums and keyboards on offset risers either side, Karevik in a cuirass and pauldrons and later a reflective cloak, Oliver Palotai switching to keytar for The Great Pandemonium, and an orchestral bed under the drum solo instead of a free-form workout. Youngblood had promised before the tour that the band would try to recreate some of the asylum on stage, and reviewers in Silver Spring, Toronto and New York described something closer to a staged piece than a straight gig.

The guest slots are the structural trick. Giada Etro of Frozen Crown handles both clean and harsh lines on several songs — one reviewer noted that every harsh vocal of the night came from a woman — and Clémentine Delauney joins for Sanctuary and the final encore. Both opening bands play short: Frozen Crown around half an hour and seven songs, Visions of Atlantis eight. Audience reports from the North American leg describe nonstop singing, crowd surfing and spontaneous chants between songs, and at least one reviewer called the New York show the strongest Kamelot performance they had covered.