Odyssey Rule #5 allows me to
choose a “new to me” disc into the reviews without a random roll. Since I have
a considerable backlog, I’ve been alternating a random roll out of the “new to
me” section. This time I rolled an album by King Diamond from 2002 called “Abigail
II: The Revenge”.
It just seemed wrong to review the
sequel first, and since “Abigail” the original album was also in the “new to me”
I switched to that album, which I now present for your reading pleasure.
Disc 1093 is…Abigail
Artist: King
Diamond
Year of Release: 1987
What’s up with the Cover? If you were to ever buy an album
just for the cover this would be it. A horse-drawn hearse careening down some
road in the dark of night. Yeah! That’s metal, baby!
How I Came To Know It: This album was listed as the best
album from 1987 from a list of “top metal albums of the last 50 years” I read
recently in an article. I liked it enough to start exploring King Diamond.
How It Stacks Up: I went a little overboard exploring King
Diamond, buying eight of his 12 studio albums in the space of about four months.
This is a lot more than I need and way too many for me to accurately rank them
at this early stage of our relationship but since we’re here and I can always
change my mind later I’ll say…third or fourth best.
Ratings: 3 stars
King Diamond is an acquired taste and despite the
eight albums and multiple listens to “Abigail” I’m not sure I’ve fully acquired
it. If you’re looking to give it a try “Abigail” is one of their more famous
albums but it is also very much a dive into the deep end of what these guys do.
“These guys” are a Danish heavy metal band named
after their lead singer, King Diamond, who is a crazy face-painting screecher
who models himself after the bizarreness of Alice Cooper and the operatic singer-storyteller
of Bruce Dickinson. Is he as good as either of them? No, but some people go for
it with such gusto they draw you in for the ride against your better judgment.
King Diamond is one of those.
It helps that the band plays fast, furious and crisp
which are key to this style of galloping eighties metal. They lay down powerful
riffs that make you bob your head creepily on the bus (sorry fellow riders)
although they are often a little eager to move on to the next riff before you’re
finished enjoying the last one. All that shifting around isn’t a prog situation
so much as they are just excited. And by excited, I mean really excited.
As a result the album is a frantic blend of
brilliant and overblown struggling for supremacy. There is a campiness to the
overblown parts that make them kind of fun as well. Not exactly radio friendly,
or lending themselves to a quiet evening of reading or sitting on the deck at
the lake house, but undeniably entertaining.
Like most King Diamond albums, this one is heavily
thematic, playing out more like a horror story than a metal album. The basic
story of “Abigail” is that a young couple move into a haunted house belonging
to the husband’s family, only to have the wife possessed by the spirit of a
stillborn child whose corpse is in the basement. There are good ghosts,
guardian ghosts, evil ghosts. There are prophecies, portents and flashbacks and
a lot of people getting pushed down the stairs to their deaths. Hilarity
ensures. In the end there is a possessed baby that eats its former body.
There are a lot of characters in this music and most
of them have speaking parts, so you might expect multiple vocalists, but no!
King Diamond takes on all the roles, his high theatrical vocals ranging from
creepy Alice Cooper through to the shriek of a terrified girl. I imagine on
stage he just sings in one direction in one voice and then sings in the other
direction to respond. He’s a one man dramatis personae, with a metal band
providing the soundtrack.
Fortunately there are a few moments here that are
just too great to deny. The title track is a powerful riff-driven piece of
fury, with a strange organ solo thrown into the middle of it, and King Diamond
himself singing a duet between the husband and the ghost of the baby. It should
not work but…it kinda does.
Lyrically all is sacrificed in service to the above
noted story. This music could have used a bit more metaphor, or maybe just more
chorus, but instead they go all in for narrative. Consider this section from “the Family Ghost”
"Beware of the
slippery stairs
You could easily
fall and break your neck
Hand me that torch
and I will lead the way
To the secret in
the dark
Take a look into
the vault, the Vault
The
sarcophagus...of a child
Abigail has been in
here for years and years
stillborn",
Born...Born...Born”
It’s an imaginative tale, but not an imaginative
telling of it.
Yet for all this batshit craziness, King Diamond
draws you in. The lead singer just won’t be denied and seems completely unaware
of how nuts it all is. As a result, he gives the whole thing a weird internal
logic. This record is overblown, excessive, darkly hilarious and desperately in
need of a more disciplined producer, but damn it if it isn’t also a whole lot
of fun.
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