Metal Overview: King Diamond (Part 2)

Welcome to part 2 of my look at King Diamond fellow Otaku & Metalheads!

At the beginning of the month, we say the king of horror metal establish his domain in the 1980s. Him along with his other servants crafted 4 of the finest metal releases in that time, and said records would become legendary. However, it was now the 1990s, and it was a new time for Heavy Metal. Would the king be able to keep hold over what goes bump in the night, and still be a force of scares? Well, take a look below to find out!

The Eye (1990)

Contrary to what plenty of elitists might say, Heavy Metal didn’t die in the 90s. It didn’t just magically disappear, and Grunge didn’t “kill” the genre (Read here for a rant I did earlier this year). Yes, Heavy Metal did lose some popularity, but it never went away, and neither did King Diamond. The vacuum left after the departure of Mickey Dee left kind of a permanent mark upon the band, but they never became a bad band. Far from it in fact! Upon acquiring the services of Snowy Shaw a year prior during their tour in the U.S., they made their way to  Sweet Silence Studios in Copenhagen, Denmark to conjure upon the arcane forces, and on the 30th of October 1990, The Eye was released. Sadly King Diamond wouldn’t tour for this album, as while it managed to get onto the Billboard 200, it only charted at no. 179, and the label wouldn’t give them any support for it.

Storywise, The Eye presents itself differently when compared to King Diamond’s prior 4 releases. Instead of ghost stories told by a narrator, we’re instead treated to a piece of historical fiction set around the bloodthirsty era of the French Inquisition. Centered around actual events during this time, we as a listener are shown these events through the lens of a magical amulet known as The Eye. The artifact grants incredible power, but if you stare into it too long it’ll microwave your mind in a matter of seconds. It’s a considerably more ambitious undertaker when compared to the material from the 80s, yet it succeeds quite easily, and because of that makes it one of the king’s most entertaining albums of the 90s.

Best Track? Eye Of The Witch! From the opening keyboard & guitar notes, you’re in for a rather different experience than anything from the band’s output in the 80s. You’re somehow enchanted by the instrumentation once the drums kick in, and you feel some kind of eldritch force once King begins singing. It’s an absolute blast from beginning to end, and if you skip it you’re insane!

Eye Of The Witch

Worst Track? Personally, there isn’t a single thing wrong with The Eye. Despite the fact that the drum work was done on drum pads rather than actual drums (Even that fact doesn’t cause issues for me. This aspect would only be pointed out by exceptionally picky listeners.), the storytelling is still top notch, the vocal work is equally fantastic, and the instrumentation is chilling to the bone. Definitely an album to listen to during this month!

The Eye. To date one of the most intriguing King Diamond albums ever released, and perhaps the most hypnotic as well. If you like your dark fantasy mixed in with some equally dark real world history, then you’ll like this record. Next album!

The Spider’s Lullabye (1995)

The period following the Eye was rife with issues. Snowy Shaw left the band, and Hal Patino and Pete Blakk were replaced by Sharlee D'Angelo and Mike Wead respectively. Yet this lineup didn’t record anything, as King Diamond reunited with Mercyful Fate in 1993 thanks to a cease of hostilities, and would balance between both Fate and King Diamond (The Band). His eponymous band would be composed of guitarists Andy La Rocque & Herb Simonsen, bassist Chris Estes, and drummer Darrin Anthony, who previously was in the Texas metal band Mindstorm. Once the new crew was gathered together, they went to the recording studio from September through October 1994 to crank out their sixth album, and on June the 6th, 1995, The Spider’s Lullabye was released.

The story this time around is considerably more simple (More on that in a moment). We’re introduced to a recluse named Harry, who’s massively afraid of spiders. Upon answering an ad to the newspaper, he travels to a hospital that has the ability to cure all kinds of phobias, where an he meets the kindly Dr. Eastmann. At first it seems like things might go well for Harry, but this “Treatment” turns out to be a session of torture, as the Dr’s assistant Nurse Needle Dear (Yes....that’s her name) unleashes a wolf spider on him. The next day, Harry complains of an odd feeling on his neck, along with spider bits & intense pain. Eastmann dismisses the complaints, but little does he know that the coming night will be quite interesting.

Best Track? To The Morgue has got to have the most sinister guitar work out of everything on The Spider’s Lullabye. From the slower paced stringwork during the chorus, to the more wilder parts, it easily complements the thunderous drumwork, and King’s vocal work goes between his patented wraith-like falsetto and more downbeat yet sinister tones with ease. Not only that, but it manages to conclude the miniature story on this album nicely, as the spiders decide to pull the strings at the hospital. I can’t spoil what happens, but suffice it to say it’s not a surprise if you’ve payed attention to the webbed tale.

To The Morgue

Worst Track? At the end of the day, The Spider’s Lullabye is just a 90s equivalent of Fatal Portrait from the decade before. Better production & better sound quality, but it doesn’t have the cohesiveness of storytelling as much as the prior 4 albums. If anything, the storytelling is slightly weaker on this album, as there are only 4 songs to tell the story instead of 5, and they’re the last tracks of the album. This results in a tale that’s not quite as impactful as Fatal Portrait......or the stories of the last 4 releases for that matter.

The Spider’s Lullabye. By no means a bad album, but a step backwards in terms of a solid story across an entire album. Still it’s one that you should seek out, and is a mild favorite of mine. However, odd times were coming to the kingdom, and King Diamond would move in a direction few people would ever expect. Next album!

The Graveyard (1996)

So here we reach the only real stumble of King Diamond’s career, and it goes by the name of The Graveyard. Released on September the 30th, 1996, the album came out amid bizarre times. Like I said earlier, and in other posts prior to this one, Heavy Metal never truly went away. It may have lessened in terms of popularity, but if anything it somehow blossomed in terms of variety. However, the one thing that Heavy Metal did suffer from in the 90s was a changing of the guard. Some classic bands changed what made them so great a decade prior to a considerably more commercial ouput, while others weren’t able to survive the musical onslaught of the 1990s. Luckily, King Diamond never truly went down the sellout path.....but he did step onto it with a single foot. A year or so prior to the release of this record, they were opening for Metallica. Let me repeat....they were opening for Metallica! Hetfield and the gang weren’t in full sellout mode by the mid 90s, but the sellout bush was beginning to show a blossom or two, and to see a band like the caliber of King Diamond open for them is a crime. Whether because of the experience with Metallica or because they want to adapt for a wider audience, King & the band created The Graveyard with appeal for a bigger audience.

Ironically, this change actually kind of helped The Graveyard. It would go on to be one of the most successful King Diamond albums to date at that time, peaking at #23 in the Finnish Charts and remaining for two weeks in the Top 40 chart. Sadly it would be the last album that Darrin Anthony would be on, as after The Graveyard’s release he left the band due to a car accident. His replacement would come in the form of Chastain drummer John Luke Hebert, and without spoiling anything.....he’s a nice addition.

Storywise, we find that King is once again a character in the tale. Taking on the role of an employee for crooked and immoral Mayor McKenzie, King one night walks in on the mayor diddling his kid! A daughter no less who goes by the name of Lucy. King doesn’t stay quiet about this, and thanks to the machinations of the mayor is locked up in Black Hill Sanitarium. Years go by, and King is a shell of his former self, gone mad & hellbent on revenge against McKenzie. One night he manages to escape the sanitarium after strangling his nurse, and hides inside a graveyard to avoid the cops. While hiding in the graveyard, King kills anybody who happens to travel through it at night, and not long after comes across an urban legend. The legend states that if you die in the graveyard & lose your head, your soul is trapped within it forever, and this gives King an idea on how to exact his revenge. So he manages to capture Lucy, and calls the mayor to the graveyard for a perverse game. Before the mayor are seven graves with identical gravestones that each say “Lucy Forever”, and while blindfolded has 3 guesses as to which one holds his daughter (Who by the way was still alive as she was buried). Will our..... “hero” succeed in saving his kid, or will King receive the revenge he deserves? The answer may surprise you.

Best Track? Digging Graves is just an absolutely sinister song, but it’s also my favorite at the same time. By this point in the story, King has Lucy with him at the graveyard, and is beginning the process of setting up his little game for McKenzie. There’s a weird king of tragedy in this tune, as you can tell that he doesn’t want to harm Lucy, and Lucy saw him as a friend of sorts before his incarceration, but King’s hunger for revenge overrides the concepts of right and wrong, and in a sense he doesn’t care about the girl’s life. Putting the story aside, the band create a really eerie atmosphere with the instrumentation, and King’s voice is a little more subdued, yet still retains his patented sinister feel. Definitely a song to not skip!

Digging Graves

Worst Track? Really the biggest issue of The Graveyard is it’s style. Compared to pretty much everything beforehand, this album has a considerably more commercial feel to it. Note: I didn’t say the album was a play for more mainstream success. King Diamond has, had, and will never be a sellout, but this is the only time that he & the band ever made a record that was more easily accessible by the public. On top of that, the album isn’t as supernatural as everything before. There’s still some spooky aspects no question, but it doesn’t rely on them as much as what came before it. King Diamond in interviews prior to the album’s release that this album was more socially minded, as it talks about pedophilia & how sometimes the perpetrators get away with it (May have spoiled the ending with that). However, despite all of this.....

I actually recommend The Graveyard! It may be a little more geared towards radio play and it might not be as scary as prior releases, but it’s this ease of access that makes this record a great place to start for some potential King Diamond fans. Even veteran fans who want something easier to listen to might like this album if they’ve never listened to it, and while it not a massive favorite of mine, it’s certainly one of the king’s more interesting releases of the 90s. However, for some of the King Diamond faithful The Graveyard was seen as a step backwards, but like any smart king who may have screwed up a little, he knew how to correct himself when his subjects were watching.....so let’s take a trip to Louisiana to see what he did!

Voodoo (1998)

With the release of The Graveyard, King Diamond did a bit of backpedding in terms of his patented spooky feel. It’s easier accessability & reduced scare factor turned many fans off, and guitarist Herb Simonsen (Who would be replaced by Glen Drover) and bassist Chris Estes left the band afterwards. However, the acquisition of drummer John Luke Hebert proved to be an incredible addition to the band, as he & Andy LaRocque were the dominant forces on the cryptic record (Instrumentationally of course) by the name.....of Voodoo! Released on February the 24th of 1998, this album is something of a spiritual successor to Abigail (Ironic, given what’s to come): we return to a haunted manor, innocent people are involved, and there are some genuine scares involved. Not only that, but by this point King Diamond was comfortable with his schedule of Mercyful Fate one year and his own band the next, and it shows on Voodoo. It was also a pretty big success in Finland, as it managed to peak at no. 27 for 4 weeks.

As for the tale before us, we got ourselves an interesting setup. It’s 1932, and the Lafayettes have just moved into a colonial manor on the Mississippi, north of Baton Rouge. The family is composed of David, his pregnant wive Sarah, and Grandpa (Presumably David’s). On the property of the manor happens to be the site of a voodoo graveyard, and the noises coming from it at night worry the Lafayettes. They have a meeting to discuss what they should do, but unknown to them their house servant, Salem, is a practitioner of the craft, and is afraid at what they might do. So he consults spirits of the Loa (Including Baron Samedi) to find out what he must do, and the answer is quite clear.....kill the Lafayettes. Thus, Salem is sent on his want to accomplish this goal, and the results are.....interesting to say the least.

Best Track? One Down, Two To Go has got to be one of, if not the most hypnotic tracks on Voodoo. It starts out rather dreamy, and King Diamond’s voice is equally as dreamy & soft. Once that beginning period is done, it immediately goes into an incantation of screeching guitars and almost tribal-like drum work, yet it never lets the listener go as it’s somehow still captivating to the mind. King’s voice is particularly interesting to me in this song, as he occupies a bizarre middle ground. He does have his patented screech and softer parts, but it’s when he straddles the line that I find fascinating. Simply the best track of the album!

One Down, Two To Go                               

Worst Track? Trying to pick a bad song on Voodoo is like trying to pick a bad Lindt truffle or chocolate bar. There’s nothing bad on this album at all, and it’s a crime against the bayou and the Loa to even remotely suggest that there’s a bad song on here! Even the shorter tracks have so much atmosphere to them, it’s sad that some people might not like them.

Voodoo. An eerie King Diamond album if there ever was one. It’s unique story ranks it up there with The Eye as the two dominant releases of the 1990s. If you like your horror metal more in the southern mysticism realm, then Voodoo is for you. Massively recommended!

And that was part 2 of my look at King Diamond. A considerably more up-in-the-air time for the band, but a period that gave us some of the most interesting releases in the horror master’s discography. Well, part 3 will be coming at the end of the month, but beforehand I think something fun & lighthearted might be in order. See you soon!


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If you’re curious about listening to these albums, click on the links below:

The Eye

The Spider’s Lullabye

The Graveyard
 
Voodoo