Mercyful Fate
Time (Metal Blade)
An interview with King Diamond
by Paul Lee
Hey kids, lock up your grandma, hide your dolls and get out your crucifix, THE KING HAS RETURNED. Yes, boys and girls, Mercyful Fate, led by the menacing King Diamond, has once again risen from hell, ready to crucify the world with their bloody evil sound.
The new album, Time (Metal Blade), a follow up to the 1993 comeback, In The Shadows, contains nothing less than you would expect from these metal pioneers: Perfectly orchestrated, theatrical and horrifying… you couldn’t have asked for a better Halloween present.
The King is staying true to what he started back in the early ’80s, and his sound – which has inspired the likes of Metallica, Megadeth, and countless other metal bands – lives on into the ’90s. He just won’t go away. Now, after dealing with personal problems and pulling it all together, Mercyful Fate is getting ready to kick off a world tour. “It feels like the old days… maybe even better,” states the eerie Dane from his home in Texas, “We don’t have all these stupid little egotistical things like ‘I want my song here, or I’ll have another song here that I think is better than your song.’ We’ve totally outgrown that kind of stuff; now we support each other and get the best out of it.”
With Satan by his side, King is no stranger to controversy. Appearances on Geraldo and the 700 Club seem to generate interest directed toward this strange character. “I don’t think it helped or hurt us,” explains KD about his appearance on the Geraldo special, Satanism In America. “The good thing is that they showed a clip of us playing in Florida. The other stuff was nothing – he had sent a crew (Geraldo wasn’t there himself), and they interviewed me for 45 minutes, where I was telling them all this stuff about Satanism. It wasn’t very sensational to them at all, and they couldn’t use it on the show because I didn’t tell them that I was sacrificing babies every weekend (laughs). It made too much sense, so they only used one line, then they went on to these other people that were behind screens saying that they had sold their babies to Satanic cults, or some shit, and it was like, ‘yeah, right man.'”
KD continues, “It’s kind of a drag when people don’t know what they are talking about but they will put it down anyway. It’s just a matter of people being open-minded and accepting different viewpoints. Some people may not like it, but a lot of the stuff in Anton LeVey’s Satanic Bible I can totally support; it makes a lot of sense to me. It’s kind of strange to see your own feelings written in a book, which is exactly how I feel about life.”
When Mercyful Fate split up in 1985, King Diamond forged ahead with a band using his own moniker. Diehard fans need not worry – King Diamond plans to keep his own thing going simultaneously with Mercyful Fate. “It takes some extra work, definitely,” continues King about being in two bands at once. “But that’s cool, no problem, I just finished a King Diamond album, The Spider’s Lullaby, and that has turned out so goddamned heavy, man. Andy Laroque is still in the band, but there are three new guys in there. This is the strongest lineup we have ever had in King Diamond. And about the new album: Four songs contain a nasty horror story, and a lot of humor as well; guaranteed you will laugh when you read the lyrics and hear the songs. But it’s also very raw, with a lot of up-tempo aggression. Some of the songs sound like they could be taken straight off Abigail, definitely in-your-face and aggressive. I couldn’t have wished for it to turn out better.”
