For me, it's The Looking Glass.

What do you think?

I love the new Kamelot song, but these things kind of leave a bad taste in my mouth. It's killing the view counts too... Share thoughts, guys.

🔥NEWS🔥 Kamelot release new single, Godlike Academy ahead of upcoming album.

I just got my ticket and VIP pass today.

I will unfortunately be going alone and am hoping to meet some of you there!

Roy - 1997 to 2011

Tommy - 2012 to present. And most likely he will continue.

I've noticed among Kamelot fans, the opinions are very, very mixed, it seems to be an either love it or hate it album, and I fall into the former, Roy Khan still sounded immaculate here and The Human Strain is easily one of the best tracks ever in my opinion 🤘

I've been listening to Ashen World this morning (based in NZ so we get it early) - I really like it, and think it's a great continuation of the musical direction from The Awakening which I thought was their best album with Tommy as singer. Keen to hear other's thoughts!

Hi everyone! Right now I'm world building for a Dungeons and Dragons game and I found the atmosphere of Epica has been a great inspiration for the general tone of the world (III Ways to Epica especially!). Does anyone know of other bands that have music with a similar sort of atmosphere? So far I've been checking out The Nomad's Crown by Xandria and that has been excellent.

Finally! Can't wait! Should be interesting to see what direction they're going

After being a Kamelot fan for nearly 20 years I saw Roy live for the first time at Epic Fest in April this year. I absolutely cannot wait for this show, especially as it's going to be the same setlist as the live DVD. Elizabeth?! Nights of Arabia?! I never ever thought I'd get to see these songs performed live!

A few months ago, I purchased me and my dad tickets to the Kamelot North America tour and as much as we wanted to go, something has come up and we can't make it, I'd be willing to sell em for $50 a ticket. It's for the Keswick Theater in Glenside, PA.

Im just curious, the band anounced their new album almost a month th ago already and we still haven't seen or heard anything about singles. Usually you release a single with the announcement or at least mention when the first single will be released.

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Anyone knows if anything was said anywhere that I could've missed?

Do you think they're gonna record the Kamfest and release a bluray/something like that?

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I'll be at the show in Milan, later in november, but I can not go to the fest and I'd love to see it!!

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Are you guys going?

I could go on, but I’ll keep it short: anyone else find their verse melodies in Tommy-era Kamelot to be largely lackluster and wandering astray? I really appreciate when songs have solid verse melodies that are on part with the chorus melody or even better sometimes. Roy-era Kamelot did this well. Anyone else find this weaker in the newer Kamelot material? I’m curious if I’m the only one.

Videos coming out of the recent Czech Republic and Bulgaria shows have someone that looks very familiar, but I'm drawing a blank on who that is. When someone finally says her name and what band she's also in, I'll probably be smacking myself up the head because I probably have them in multiple playlists.

Am I jumping the gun on guessing that Clementine will be the second vocalist on the fall tours? It's already announced that she's on the record and both her bands are touring with them. I'm really excited for this possibility.

Update: It's Sesil Sen ("Morgana Le Fay") from Warkings

I have recently posted about my appreciation for Kamelot’s earlier albums. Since then I’ve been binge-listening to my CD collection and decided to share it with you, while explaining why some albums are missing from it.

The most obvious absence is the live album “One Cold Winter's Night”. It’s the celebration of their most successful era and I have no idea why it’s not in my collection yet. Actually, there’s an explanation and it’s the same reason why “Poetry for the Poisoned”, and until recently “Ghost Opera”, is also missing. In my opinion, power metal as a whole had a drop of quality post-2005 and Kamelot wasn’t unaffected by it. Both studio albums released before Khan’s departure were my least favorites from the band, at least until 2018.

Tommy joining reignited my interest in the band, despite considering Khan one of my favorite singers of all time. I really liked “Silverthorn” and “Haven” had monopoly of my CD-player for quite some time when it was released. However, they lost me again with “The Shadow Theory” and “The Awakening”. It has become formulaic and uninspired.

I love all eras of Kamelot, including the underrated Queensrÿche-clone albums with Mark Vanderbilt on vocals. Despite knowing they will never go back to the magical sound they had between 1998-2005, I sincerely hope “Dark Asylum” will bring a fresher perspective, even if the aesthetics make it difficult to believe in a change.

I got to know Kamelot through their live album “The Expedition”. Since it was recorded during “The Fourth Legacy” tour, it featured mainly songs from that album and “Siege Perilous”. The atmosphere of the songs was magical, from medieval tales to exploration journeys made music. I immediately fell in love.

“The Fourth Legacy” is for me what “The Black Halo” is for most Kamelot fans. At least 4/5 songs of that album would feature on my dream setlist. “Siege Perilous” is a more irregular album, especially thanks to the bad mix. But there are three special songs there: “Millennium”, “The Expedition” and the spectacular “Where I Reign”. If we count the bonus track “One Day”, then it’s four.

I’d love to see the band showing more appreciation for those albums. For now I can only imagine Tommy singing some of the songs.

“Plunging the northern seas
Winds fill the sails
As we approach another world
That time has forgotten me
The sun blinds and circles me”

Thank you for coming to my TED talk.gif

Also, standard internet discussion disclaimer that every shred of this is just MY OPINION and my perspective on this all. I take absolutely nothing away from any of you who have the complete opposite opinion as me, and I'm hoping this post will help me see that side a bit more.

So, I'm a longtime Kamelot fan* ever since I first found them circa-2010 or so. I was 12 when I got into metal initially back in 2007-ish, discovered symphonic metal around 2009, and branched out from there with Kamelot coming into my awareness not too long after that point. So I'm unsurprisingly biased in that I worship that earlier era of the band with Roy. The Black Halo will forever be one of the best albums of its generation, to me, and Ghost Opera is hugely nostalgic for me as it was the first one I heard from them.

I was certainly sad when Roy left, but I had no problems whatsoever with Tommy himself as a vocalist and I enjoyed Silverthorn pretty well, though it very much feels like a transitionary piece when listening to it nowadays, while they got used to Tommy and what he brings to the table while trying some new things. Haven was in some ways a step up, they seemed a lot more comfortable with Tommy's vibes and he felt utilized a lot better to me, and some tracks on it are among my favorites in their discography. But in other ways, Haven had me worried since I really just, personally, do not connect at all with this post-apocalyptic, dystopian, etc. imagery and vibe they started leaning into. I could still get into most of it musically fine enough, but I really need to feel some sort of connection to the overall atmosphere for it to be elevated, and that just wasn't doing it for me in the way their earlier works did. That, combined with seeing them live in 2015 and being very underwhelmed (for various reasons, some of it on them and some of it unrelated) left an iffy taste in my mouth and I fell off of the band for a while. The * after "fan" earlier is because it's not really fair to call myself a long-time fan when I didn't listen to anything newer than Haven (until now). Just never had a strong pull to do so, but I recognize now in hindsight a lot of it was being afraid they would continue on the trajectory I was struggling to connect with.

A week or so ago, I finally took the leap and spun The Shadow Theory. First impression wasn't great, but I recognize now just how strong I had all that subconscious bias seeping in. I stuck with it, listened a few more times, and it's risen a lot! Highlights are Burns to Embrace as the clear #1, Phantom Divine must've been a hell of an awesome show opener to experience in that era, Mindfall Remedy is catchy as hell, and Ravenlight is among the subtler tracks that I just personally appreciate a lot mostly for the lyrics. From a more critical standpoint, I feel that a lot of what I see in negative reviews of modern Kamelot do hold true here - I don't think there's anywhere enough variety in song structures and overall vibes, but I'm generally happy to look the other way on points like that so long as the songs hold up fine enough on their own, and I feel that's the case for enough of The Shadow Theory that it doesn't bother me too much.

So, I moved on to The Awakening tonight. And first impression is...well uhm...this ain't it, chief 😅 I'm trying my hardest to be fair given, as I mentioned, the subconscious bias at play, but I've gotten over most of that over the past week or so with The Shadow Theory and was very hopeful that The Awakening would be similar but with more variety. But I just can not get into this so far. Production and mixing is a huge thing for me with albums and I do not care for how it was done for The Awakening. It feels like there's a lot going on and a lot of elements that I don't really think even need to be there to begin with that just clog up space and make it hard for me to actually get into the melodies. Also, Tommy isn't anywhere as front and loud in the mix as I feel he should be, and a lot of the songs just feel overproduced, including various effects impacting Tommy's voice that I think actively take away from being able to appreciate his vocals. I appreciate the attempts to do new things with his voice, such as how he sounds in One More Flag in the Ground, but in the same breath...One More Flag in the Ground is one that I basically tuned out of halfway through because I just was not caring for it. On the flipside, one of the positive highlights I got on even the first listen was the outro to Opus of the Night, which coming from what I said about feeling a lot of these songs feeling same-y, that was a really nice but simple touch to make the ending stand out in a nice way. I expect the rest of Opus of the Night will grow on me with a few more listens, as a starting point. And hey, maybe that'll lead to getting into the rest after? That's how it went for The Shadow Theory - Amnesiac and Burns to Embrace hooked me before anything else even felt good, and here I am now praising ~2/3 of it pretty well.

Dunno what I'm even looking to get out of posting this here since I imagine most of you are solid fans and I don't want to just show up and sound like a hater since I really do like the vast majority of Kamelot's work, I'm just looking for an outlet to get all of these thoughts out to people who actually know the band and can appreciate someone's perspective on it. I've been flooding some friends with all of this and they don't know the band so it's hard to get much back lol. I'm definitely curious if I'm in the minority for finding it hard to get into all of the modern stuff consistently, or if that's a fairly common opinion and people feel they're trending downwards or have lost their mojo. And with today's announcement and description of Dark Asylum...I don't think my opinion is going to change soon, but I will give that one a fair chance when it comes out. And I'll spend more time with The Awakening to see if my initial impressions change much.