King Diamond appreciation thread

 

well, you've got his best work already, whatever came after those three albums follow the same pattern.

To answer your question, you need Fatal Portrait, the amazing debut, with such gems such as Dressed in White, which features Andy LaRocque's amazing licks except for the usual godly vocal lines by the King. A power metal masterpiece. Also, Halloween, a heavy metal masterpiece this time (the album is basically an equal dose of heavy/power metal), this is probably the most known song off the album. But every song rules, I'll just mention the opener The Candle, with the beautiful intro and the dark melodies of King's voice stealing the show.  The overall sound can be described as a rawer (and perhaps darker) Abigail.

The other album you need is The Eye. This has a rather thinner sound in the production than the usual, warm, analog sound he had before but it still delivers razor sharp guitar work. If I could find a falw it would be the use of the drum machine. Mikkey Dee had left to join Dokken (of all bands!) after the recording of Conspiracy and he was replaced with Snowy Shaw. He is a magnificent drummer but Roadrunner Records made huge budget cuts to King Diamond on this album. But he did program the drum machine masterfully, you can get the idea of his playing.

A great album as well, The Eye's best tracks include Eye of the Witch and Behind These Walls, both masterpieces, classic KD brilliance. 

It was bad news for Kind Diamond after this record. While the band was for quite sometime the label's strongest prioroty and highest seller, the rise of thrash and particularly the success of Sepultura and Annihilator, made KD a lower priority, lower budgets and to top it off, there was no supporting tour for the album (hence there is only one t-shirt from that era btw).

After that album, things went downhill for a number of reasons. First, Pete Blakk, who was a great guitarist left to form his own horror concept band, Totem. Which did not do well. Snowy Shaw was transfered to the Mercyful Fate reunion band, in 1993. Not that he played on that album either, still a drum machine, although a less obvious one. 

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To hear Snowy Shaw's amazing drumming, I highly recommend Memento Mori's Rhyme of Lunacy, a supergroup of sorts, featuring Messiah Marcolin of Candlemass on vocals, Mike Wead (then known for Hexxenhaus and a brief involvement with Candlemass - see Nightfall, then he joined Mercyful Fate in 1996 and King Diamond in 2000! It all connects really) and Snowy. That was Snowy's first studio recording btw.  The music was described at the time as Candlemass meets King Diamond, on drugs! Quite successfully too. Great band, they even got proggier on the second release, Life, Death and Other Morbid Tales. Anyway!

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King Diamond re-surfaced ini 1994, after the successful Mercyful Fate reunion, with Spider's Lullaby, which was quite the disappointment. The most obvious problem is the terribly weak and minimal drumming on the album, esp. compared to the previous stellar playing. Herb Simonsen was not really a very adequate replacement for Pete Blakk and even Andy Larocque seems out of shape. Eventually, I personally grew to like the album for what it is, even though the best track is the self-titled one, which is a funny little piece. 

Things picked up a bit with The Graveyard, although I still think the overall sound suffers notably compared to the 80s productions. Cool story though.

The best album of the post-golden era, in my opinion is Voodoo. Better sound, better playing and a better drummer. The Exorcist is such an awesome song.

From then on, it is a steady decline imo. House of God has a couple of good songs, which would be among the highlights of Spider's Lullaby for example (namely The Trees Have Eyes and The Black Devil) but after that we have what is probably King's worst album (Abigail II, totally unnecessary sequel). The Puppet Master is much better, a good album even. Give Me Your Soul Please is very mediocre imo.

So, there you have it. I wholeheartedly recommend Fatal Portrait and The Eye. I cautiously recommend Voodoo, Puppet Master and perhaps the Graveyard.

And I hope you already own Melissa and Don't Break the Oath by Mercyful Fate. Uber heavy metal classics, fantastic albums and VERY influential. I also really like In the Shadows and Time from the reunion albums.

In my opinion, the problem with post-90 King Diamond is that he divided his inspiration in two bands, without having the amazing team he had in the 80s, especially in the drum department. Like butter spread over too much bread, as that line went!

 

I agree that some of his work isn't as good as the best of his work (both MF and solo) but in my opinion it is all worth hearing/having.

Fatal Portrait>Abigail>Them>Conspiracy>The Eye is as good a 5 album run as any in the history of music.