KAMELOT have released "Sanctuary", the final single from "Dark Asylum", which arrives August 28 via Napalm Records. Built on pulsing riffs and cinematic swells, it hands the song to three voices: frontman Tommy Karevik alongside VISIONS OF ATLANTIS's Clémentine Delauney and DECESSUS frontwoman Ignacia Fernández.
Within the album's story, "Sanctuary" is the exit. "Dark Asylum" is set in a shadowed neo-Victorian world and takes place inside RavenHill Asylum, an institution built as a grand cathedral and repurposed into somewhere science, faith and madness are forced to share a roof.
Guitarist and founding member Thomas Youngblood explained where the song sits. "'Sanctuary' represents the moment when the darkness of RavenHill is finally left behind," he said. "The song is about hope, freedom and finding your way back to yourself after everything you've endured. The video takes the story beyond the walls of RavenHill and gives us a glimpse of life after the escape, a new beginning, but one still shaped by the memories and scars of the past."
On the three vocalists, he added: "With Tommy, Clémentine and Ignacia bringing three distinct voices to the song, it gives 'Sanctuary' an emotional depth that perfectly reflects the journey from darkness into light."
Fernández will be a familiar name to anyone who followed the Miss World pageant this month — the DECESSUS vocalist, the current Miss World Chile, performed her own band's death metal in the competition's talent round.
The guest list across the record is unusually long even by KAMELOT standards, taking in AVANTASIA mastermind Tobias Sammet, ELUVEITIE's Lea-Sophie Fischer, Delauney, Fernández, Rannveig Sif Sigurðardóttir, Sólveig Sara Leupold and Billy King. Musically the band push further into cinematic and atmospheric territory while keeping the hooks that define them, moving from the sweep of "Ashen World" through the introspection of "Sanctuary" to the layered "Ivy, My Dear".
Karevik framed the album as an interior journey rather than a horror setting. "'Dark Asylum' invites listeners into the hidden chambers of the human mind," he said. "At its core, the album explores the duality of human nature: the constant tension between fear and hope, chaos and stillness, destruction and healing. It reflects the struggle to remain sane within a cold and barren world, while ultimately discovering that salvation is not something found externally, but something that already exists within us all."
The release is spread across a deep list of formats: gold, solid silver and classic black vinyl, plus white label, white splatter and blood-filled variants paired with a 24-page booklet, several CD digipaks including a two-disc edition with an instrumental version of the album, cassette and digital.