He’s not Roy Khan, but new Kamelot vocalist Fabio Lione got a warm welcome from fans at Station 4 in St. Paul last night. Playing in oppressive heat (the venue is in a historic building that has no air conditioning), Lione, the rest of Kamelot, and guest vocalist Simone Simons (Epica) ran through a lengthy setlist drawing mostly on the band’s last three albums. I have a pretty strong distaste for power metal, but Kamelot puts on a reliably good live show, and their music is somehow quite a bit less cheesy than most power metal fare. So I count myself as kind of a fan, much to my own surprise, and had a good time.

Every time I shoot at Station 4 I curse the lighting and the stage setup with the stupid pillar in the middle of the pit. Thankfully, Kamelot brought their own lighting; the pillar wasn’t going anywhere, unfortunately. Three songs, no flash, and while I would have liked to have been able to shoot the Simons/Lione duets (none of which took place in the first three songs) from the pit, I was able to snipe away with a telephoto lens later, and got some good shots that way. Below are a few of my favorites.

The usual plug before getting to the photos: see more of my photos from this show at Flickr, and then like me on Facebook or follow me on Twitter to keep up with my work!

Here’s an example of how the lights were tonight before Kamelot came on with their own lighting rig. This is Blackguard (with guest Alissa White-Gluz from The Agonist, who also played but whom I did not get to shoot unfortunately); this is about as good as the lighting got during their set. I was pretty much at ISO 6400 and slow shutter speeds the whole time.