SAN FRANCISCO — One of the most influential steel singers to emerge after the 1970s, when he rose to fame with Danish band Mercyful Fate, King Diamond would revel in even greater good fortune from the horrific concept albums he delivered with his eponymous band.
With a voice ranging from a guttural growl to a towering falsetto and his face sinister and painted on a corpse, Diamond (born Kim Bendix Peterson) and Mercyful Fate were the pioneers of black steel thanks to the hymns heard in the flagship band of the early 80s. Although the band broke up in 1985 due to musical differences (apparently between singer and guitarist Hank Sherman), their limited production and fierce gigs—namely their first U. S. tour with Motörhead in 1984—exerted a primary influence on Metallica, Slayer, and a host of excessive steel bands that would keep their wake.
Diamond would go on to shape his self-titled band which, firstly, included Fate guitarist Michael Denner and bassist Timi Hansen, releasing their debut album Fatal Portrait in 1986. Following this effort, the organization continued to explore a more narrative technique with the acclaimed horror conceptual efforts Abigail, “Them,” and Conspiracy. Always a menacing live figure with his crossbone-down microphone (made of a real human femur and shin), King Diamond enhanced theatricality by introducing a more elaborate level of art, adding costumed actors and illusionistic tricks to develop. his execution of dark and gothic visions.
Mercyful Fate would reunite in 1993, but Diamond controlled recording and touring with either band for the decade until Fate took another hiatus in 1999. The singer and his band released more successful concept albums with Abigail II and The Puppet Master in the 2000s, however, he curtailed his travel efforts.
Diamond had a severe fitness attack in 2010 when he underwent triple bypass surgery after suffering several attacks at the center. The singer, despite everything, made his first post-op to return to the level in 2011, performing a combination of Mercyful Fate hits with Metallica for a long time. Fate enthusiasts and former bandmates Hank Shermann, Michael Denner and Timi Hansen showcase Metallica’s 30th anniversary at the Fillmore.
In 2014, Diamond and his band embarked on their first full U. S. tour. He was in the U. S. for a decade in front of an ecstatic audience before joining Slayer the following summer as part of the last Rockstar Mayhem Festival in 2015. The following year, Diamond toured performing his vintage album Abigail in its entirety with other solo hits and Mercyful Fate tracks, betting on steel festivals on both sides of the Atlantic and re-establishing the band as a giant.
Since then, Diamond has worked hard to paint his band’s next new album, originally scheduled for release in 2020. The Institute will provide King Diamond’s latest dark story about madness and angst in an intellectual hospital and mark the group’s first new effort. 16 years old. In the summer of 2019, the singer also announced the first Mercyful Fate reunion performances that were scheduled for European festivals in 2020 but were delayed by two years due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This main announcement unfortunately marked the recent death of the former bassist. Timi Hansen from cancer.
The downtime led Fate to begin painting what would be her first new clothing album in more than two decades. His appearances at a series of steel festivals last summer, his first live performances since 1999, were met with exultant critics such as Diamond and The existing lineup of Mercyful Fate with founding guitarist Hank Shermann, King Diamond guitarist Mike Wead, drummer Bjarne T. Holm and bassist Joey Very (Armored Saint, Fates Warning) have titled Sweden Rock, Graspop Metal Meeting, Waken Open Air, Bloodstock among many others. The band also headlined Psycho Las Vegas in August, marking their first U. S. performance in more than two decades. CBS SF recently spoke with King Diamond about his two bands prior to the landing of Mercyful Fate’s existing fall excursion at Sacramento Hard Rock in Trigal on Oct. 30.
CBS SF: Word of Mercyful Fate returns to the level for the first time in 2019, only to be put on hold during the pandemic. Did the hiatus push the band to work on new curtains during the lockdown or was it already underway?
King Diamond: We’ve been working on that and we’re still doing it, whether it’s for King Diamond and Mercyful Fate. So we’re working on new curtains for either band for full albums for both bands. We did a lot, actually, at that point when we knew COVID had plenty of it for a while. I have a fully built studio here that is operational in my house, as do Hank [Shermann, guitarist of Mercyful Fate] and Andy [LaRoque, guitarist of King Diamond]. Of course, he has had a professional studio for a long time.
But almost everyone — [Mercyful Fate/King Diamond guitarist] Mike Wead has one; I know [King Diamond drummer] Matt Thompson can record drums at home. Bjarne [T. Holm] for Mercyful Fate will move to an outdoor studio in Copenhagen; That’s where he recorded drums for the new songs, like “The Jackal of Salzburg” that we played live without having recorded it. But after we ended up in Las Vegas, he recorded the correct drum editing.
We were given a position now so we can move on, however, a lot is happening because we are getting closer to the tour. There’s all sorts of promotional stuff, we had to find a replacement bassist for Joey [Vera]. So many things. . . I wouldn’t say they’re colliding, yet so much is happening right now. There is the staging, which was never finished; You will see the final version. This will be the first time in the United States that it is nevertheless finished. Yesterday I saw, the last two Gothic arches that will be added. At this time, they were deciding where to put about six of them. It will be at the moment in production land.
And that’s been the concept all along, however, because of COVID, it’s been very complicated to do. Pretty much everything we have to do when it comes to traveling, you know?I mean, locate trucks, locate crews, locate drivers for buses and trucks. It’s all ridiculous. And the fabrics for those corporations that build productions, they say, “yes, we have other people here now, but we don’t have fabrics. “And in the other direction, they say, “Well, we don’t have enough other people to paint here. Then you have to wait. We were late, a long time. “
And that was the case here with this thing. We had to move to Poland, where we knew, thanks to our friends at Behemoth, that they were hiring someone who had done an amazing job for them. Therefore, they were highly recommended. So we went to them to do some things. There is this seal on the front of our high altar, and the wonderful cross that we have on our altar, it is they who made them. There is a new cross that they made that was the first one used in Las Vegas, but it was not used well there because the position was too small; It had low ceilings. So we absolutely had to place it on the back of a light lamp and it looked smaller than it is. It didn’t have the right ratio and it wasn’t in the right position and it wasn’t well lit, all things.
But now it is here and the two arches will be blown up, the two arches that will be on the ladder as a component of the upper level, and that will finally complete it. Therefore, it is a higher production than we had for Europe. Festivals. The set we use, is still available in Europe. And we sent copies of some of the stuff to the U. S. A company in Los Angeles built us production for Las Vegas. So we have productions in Europe and the United States. United, which is literally good. It’s expensive, but it’s very effective for the future, because there will be exhibitions that we would have said no to and that we can do now.
We played the last concert, the 18th concert in Europe, at the Bloodstock Festival in England, just outside Birmingham. And the next presentation, a week later, was in Las Vegas. Like I said, we couldn’t put some things the same way. And now we have added more to achieve it despite everything. So it gets complicated, but it’s going to be great for the future, because we’re going to be able to do more exhibitions. Before, we had to ship everything in a two-month container. And today, that’s 3 times the value they had without any guarantee that they will make it on time. Sometimes they just can’t locate the boxes for you.
CBS SF: I was wondering how it was going to work. Because I think for European festivals, you have a very gigantic level set. I didn’t know if it would be the same production, but it turns out to be necessarily the case. I’m very excited to see Mercyful back in Fate. Je I think the last time was in the early 1990s in Oakland, you played at the Omni, which closed a long time ago. Although I’ve noticed you with your band since you got back on the road.
King Diamond: Yes, and it will continue. He intended to be King Diamond at this time. The label’s plans are still company about what the plans were in 2019, even if we’ve been postponed and postponed. They still need the full King Diamond album to come out next. And that’s also what we need to do. The production we’re going to do with King Diamond is going to be something completely unique. I mean, even our own lighting engineer says, “Oh, man, I’m so excited, because I’ve never done anything like this before!”It’s for The Institute, which will be a two-album story.
And we replace everything with that actually. We have a new cover with the logo, not what other people saw on our tour in 2019. We had a song, “The Masquerade of Madness,” that wasn’t going to be on the album. There will be all the new songs on the album, so it’s fresh. Wow! There is a lot of enthusiasm behind what we do and we have figured out the right way to do things. In addition, with the help of the new controller – we registered with the IB – it opened many doors that we had not used for a long time. He has done more things imaginable now.
So King Diamond was not in a position to have a full album at this time. We may have only done two or three new songs live, but it doesn’t work for this production. What do we do when we release the album, the genuine one?I mean, that’s where it needs to be. Because it sticks. So we had to tell them, “We’re not in a position to hike with King Diamond now. We want to release the full album. We can no longer make that radical change, nothing. That will have to be the genuine deal We owe it to everyone.
But suddenly, there was a small room where the booking agent, which is the same for King Diamond and Mercyful Fate, said, “Can you maybe do a short Mercyful Fate tour of the US?”After Las Vegas and all that? Maybe there’s enough time, even if you’re writing for either band?”And I said, “Yeah, I guess it can be. It would be very short. Everyone would like to have more time to prepare properly. “It is moving to paintings despite the short notice. We’re just passing through to faint and do it.
CBS SF: How different is the writing experience between running with Hank Sherman in Mercyful Fate and the writing procedure you have with your own band?
King Diamond: The procedure is pretty much the same, yet I write, of course, for Mercyful Fate as it is for King Diamond. I think in other ways. In King Diamond, I would even say the writing becomes more theatrical than in Mercyful Fate because I know we have actors, we have all these things that will happen on stage. And Andy knows it too. I had the story for the Institute and he heard the story. He sent me 8 songs. They are not finished. I think two of them are about to finish musically, on his part. I have a lot of stuff. But the same thing happens; Andy comes with songs, Hank brought me 10 songs.
We’re working on song number two at the same time we’re working on the first one, which will probably be the single that’s likely to be released right after this tour. We have become very close to her. But overall, with Mercyful Fate, Hank comes up with a new song and isn’t quite done yet. It may have an introduction and an ending, but it’s not quite finished yet. I write my own songs, of course, but with the collaborative material, he brings me the song and I become the guy with the scalpel, sort of. I cut that component here, and then I say, “Copy and paste here!”and “Can we use this solo piece to sing? Because it’s much bigger than this other thing. “etc. And it has. That’s how we made Don’t Break the Oath. It is precisely the same environment in what we are doing right now among ourselves.
So it’s easy. It’s fun to revel in this that way, because that’s precisely what we used to do. And I’ll call Hank: when he brought “The Jackal of Salzburg,” it was about seven minutes and 24 seconds, I think, and now it’s 8 minutes and 54 seconds. Here’s how it goes. Sometimes it’s the other way around, you know?And it also happens with Andy. When he brings me things, are I sure to hear things?more than that. ” He might check to replace something. Or I’ll make a suggestion like, “Could you review this or that?Or can we split it in two here?We do those things and come back next time and I’ll say, “Ooooooh, it’s so much better for me now!”
And they themselves listen to it, you know? Once they pull out the scalpel, they stop by to say, “Oh, wow!Now it’s set up in a cool way!” I have a very intelligent ability to do those things. There’s a song at the moment that we’re working on, it’s about 4 minutes long, for Mercyful Fate, and it’s also amazing. It has such an outdated style that I really like it. And the same goes for King Diamond songs, where I go back to my philosophy with vocals where all the vocals are lead vocals. That’s how I saw it.
But there was a moment when it was like I was being told, “Maybe you don’t want to do so much with those choirs. You have the main role here. ” That’s not how I see it. Sometimes I like it calm and condensed from right to left through the total stereo symbol if that’s what creates the right feeling. So I’ll do anything to create those crazy things that seem to me to belong there. . And it all comes down to the fact that all voices are the number one voices. It will have to be at full power. And the same with other things too, guitar solos. It’s a very, very old feeling that we have for any of the groups, it’s very refreshing. It’s nice.
CBS SF: It would seem to me that in the fashion era you’ve had to do some remote paintings in terms of sharing records in the past, but in fact, the pandemic will have to have amplified that, because for a while, you might just paint. Remotely, so how else do you go to technique?
King Diamond: Yes, and the coming and going is fast. That’s because we’re all sitting in the study of our own home. We don’t want to go into the studio to record. It’s only with Bjarne that they move into a genuine studio to burn off their battery. Matt [King Diamond Thompson drummer] can also move into the studio, but he himself has a fully capable studio. The rest of the boys, they all have their own studies. I mean Pontus [King Diamond bassist Egberg] essentially has his own studio. Joey has his own studio. He helped replace bassist Becky from Birmingham, the woman who replaced the tour, helped her re-record bass from one of the recent shows, I think it was Wacken.
The way he approached everything when he joined the band was to stay true to what Timi Hansen did. Timmy left us, but [Vera] had the opportunity when we played Copenhell to meet Timi’s daughter and all that. So there’s a really smart sentiment. that she can see him touching Timi’s things. And she brings the same joy to Becky and shows her how she touches all things. Because it can be hard to hear what’s going on in the original albums with the baselines. They both [Vera and Baldwin] play with their hands and have the same growl that Timi had with his bass, so it’s very authentic.
Mercyful Fate is hosting their fall excursion with German thrashers Kreator and blackened speed-metal band Midnight at Sacramento Hard Rock in Wheatland on October 30. of Salzburg” and why guitarist Michael Denner is rarely a very important component of Fate’s current line-up.