CD Odyssey Disc 1166: King Diamond

Sometimes you gotta know when to cut your losses. This next review is me doing exactly that.

Disc 1166 is… The Graveyard

Artist: King Diamond

Year of Release: 1996

What’s up with the Cover? Looks like King Diamond and Andy LaRocque went out one evening to do some amateur photography with their trusty Snap-O-Matic. I don’t know if a Snap-O-Matic is even a thing, but it seems like that would be the name of any camera that takes photos this bad.

How I Came To Know It: I did a deep dive through the entire King Diamond discography a little over a year ago. This was one of the ones I liked.

How It Stacks Up:  I currently have seven King Diamond albums, which I have come to learn is way too many. Of those seven, I rank “The Graveyard” 4^th. And since – spoiler alert – this is the last King Diamond album I plan to review, here’s the full list:

1. “The Eye”: 4 stars (reviewed at Disc 1095)
2. The Graveyard: 3 stars (reviewed right here)
3. Abigail: 3 stars (reviewed at Disc 1093)
4. Fatal Portrait:  2 stars (not reviewed because…I’m done)
5. Them: 2 stars (not reviewed because…enough)
6. The Spider’s Lullabye: 2 stars (reviewed at Disc 1104)
7. Abigail II: 2 stars (reviewed at Disc 1124)
8. Conspiracy: 1 star (reviewed at Disc 1152)

You read that correctly. I didn’t review “Fatal Portrait” and “Them” and I’m not going to. I’m done with you, King Diamond, and your entire discography.

Ratings: 3 stars

In popular culture, when a father is trying to cure a son of his smoking habit he makes the kid sit in the bathroom and smoke cigarette after cigarette. Eventually the kid is retching into the toilet trying to cough his tortured lungs into the sewers, but he’s cured.

I’m like that kid, except I had a King Diamond problem. Over the course of a few months I bought eight King Diamond albums – five of them in a single boxed set. Finally, the CD Odyssey gods stepped in to cure me by force feeding me what I thought I wanted. Over the past 73 albums, I’ve rolled King Diamond six times. At first this was a novelty, and then it was a fun coincidence. Around album three or four it became an endurance test that I was eager to master. But now, confronted with album #6 and only three quarters of the way through the experience, my ears are starting to develop a gag reflex. I am done with King Diamond.

Although it no longer matters, “The Graveyard” is one of his better albums. It has some scorching guitar riffs from Andy Larocque and some soaring melodies. Even King’s voice, which can screech to the point of incoherence, is restrained by his standards. Maybe the ten years he’d spent contorting his vocals finally took their toll, but the end result was a good thing.

And yet…I could care less. I am done with his brand of theatre and bombast. I was initially drawn to King Diamond because of Larocque’s scorching guitar licks – and I still love those – and I was entertained by the crazy and inventive stories King would weave around those licks. I love a good theme and these records were the ultimate in concept albums.

“The Graveyard” is no exception. And while I have mostly lost interest, let’s recap it for old time’s sake. Here we have a man locked up in an insane asylum but who murders his nurse and escapes. He then kidnaps a man’s daughter, buries her in a grave and forces him to guess which grave she is in. When the man succeeds, the inmate plans to murder him anyway. However, a pane of glass suddenly falls from a crypt window and decapitates the inmate. The little girl then takes the inmate’s head and puts it in her backpack. The End.

In King Diamond’s world, if you are killed and your head is severed in a graveyard your soul is trapped forever in your head. I suppose getting taken home by the little girl could be seen as a silver lining, but I imagine an epilogue where the head spends the next few months decomposing while being forced to play a starring role in a seven year old’s tea party. I mean, at least until mom comes in with some sandwiches and cookies and sees it oozing all over the carpet. “Lucy…I’ve told you a hundred times. If you’re going to play with that head put a towel down first!” Hmmm…I think I have the makings of “The Graveyard II: Tea Time!” But I digress…

As King Diamond stories go, this is far from the weirdest, and there are some pretty cool songs as well but I just don’t give a crap anymore. All those concepts have worn me out. I love a good story, but somehow I forgot how much I hate musicals, and King Diamond albums are basically heavy metal musicals. They belong off Broadway, with lots of crazy costumes and a troupe of Cirque de Soleil dancers flipping around and contorting themselves.

If you count “Abigail II” (which I have already given away) I’ve got over 5 hours of King Diamond music and I’ve heard it all at least three times now. That’s 15 hours of my life I’ll never get back. I’m cutting my losses. These might be meticulously rendered metal nightmares, but it is time someone else dreamed them. I’m moving on and getting rid of the entire collection. If I want creative songs about crazies and axe murderers I’ve got plenty of Alice Cooper and Handsome Family records to get my fix.

Best tracks: I’m sure there are a few but…whatever.

CD Odyssey Disc 1152: King Diamond

When I review a new (to me) record, I tend to give it at least three full listens before I start talking about it (once when I first buy it and at least two in a row before I wrote the review). It isn’t a rule, but almost any record deserves this common courtesy.

I started writing this one after only two and a half listens because the thought of having to listen to it for another day was too painful to contemplate.

Disc 1152 is… Conspiracy

Artist: King Diamond

Year of Release: 1989

What’s up with the Cover? King Diamond consistently has awesome album covers, but there is always the exception that proves the rule, and this is it. The saddest thing about this cover is you can tell that King Diamond thinks he looks super scary and intense. Instead he looks like a guy about to fail a job interview to be a clown.

“No, Mr. Diamond – we’re looking for someone to do children’s birthday parties. This is highly inappropriate.”

“No, Mr. Diamond this isn’t suitable for “rock star” either.”

How I Came To Know It: I bought a 5 CD set of King Diamond’s first 5 albums. It was a good deal. I got three albums I really wanted, one I could live with and…this one.

How It Stacks Up:  I used to have eight King Diamond albums, but I gave away “Abigail II” so now I have seven. Of the remaining seven albums, I rank this one eighth, slipping it behind the now departed “Abigail II”. It will remain in my collection because breaking up the 5 CD set would just wreck the boxed set, but it is going to sit in there and rot.

Ratings:  1 star

“Conspiracy” is what would happen if someone wanted to cross a creepy Alice Cooper concept album with the driving power of an Iron Maiden album – only crappy. I can see what King Diamond is going for here, and I usually like his mix of camp and power, but this record was just…not good.

As ever, King Diamond has a weird story to tell. Like “Abigail II,” “Conspiracy” is a sequel to a previous album (in this case 1988’s “Them”). The original story revolves around a house haunted with spirits, and “Conspiracy” sees the protagonist from the original return to the house in order to – o, who gives a crap. There is a plot here, but in order for me to be engaged in it I’d have to be enjoying the music, and I didn’t.

That isn’t to say it isn’t played with skill, because it is and guitarist Andy Larocque once again shows his virtuosity. Unfortunately, his prowess is wasted on songs that are bloated and unfocused.

King Diamond’s vocals are his usual weird mix of shrill and power, but with this being my fourth King Diamond review in my last 60 albums I was tired of hearing it. If you like an artist, you should revel in exploring their back catalogue, but instead King Diamond has just worn me out. It doesn’t help that this is the worst of what he has to offer.

There are weird waltzes, Phantom of the Opera organs, and an homage to the wedding march, There are also various characters voiced by Diamond – as he is wont to do – talking about stuff I either couldn’t make out or didn’t find interesting. The music is proggy without being interesting, and laden with power chords but lacking power. Songs shift around from one concept to another, all loosely stitched together and overlong.

Even the best song on the record, “A Visit From the Dead” is only half good. It spends the first two minutes with Larocque plunking away on what sounds like a very bad folk song and then turns into something that sounds like it was made for a bad horror movie for another minute. Finally at the three minute mark the song rocks out with a pretty killer riff. I liked that riff a lot and the guitar solo that follows is pretty solid also, but it was not worth the wait.

The most annoying thing about “Conspiracy” is I can’t even get rid of it easily, because it comes in a box set and tossing it would essentially make selling the box set later (which I am considering) almost impossible. This just made me crankier, and probably helped drop it down to its one lowly star.

I’ve got two albums left in that boxed set to review, and they are on notice. Do better!

Best tracks: ½ of “A Visit From the Dead”

CD Odyssey Disc 1124: King Diamond

It’s appropriate this next album is about restless spirits because it feels like it is haunting me. I rolled it back in January, but decided starting my King Diamond journey with the sequel to an earlier album didn’t make much sense. Instead, I invoked Rule #5 and chose the first “Abigail” album, since it was also in the “new to me” section of the collection.

But like the ghost of Abigail herself, this album stalked me down to be reborn, more terrible than before.

Disc 1124 is… Abigail II: The Revenge

Artist: King Diamond

Year of Release: 2002

What’s up with the Cover? In days of yore, before the time of hair product, a creepy woman accepts a lantern from an even creepier toddler. I’m not one for creepy baby lantern-bearers, and with all that dry grass around their feet it looks like an accident waiting to happen. If I were this woman I’d take a pass on the lantern and just find my way by the glowing ghost light emanating from the mansion. Yes, that would be better.

How I Came To Know It: As part of my recent return to heavy metal I discovered a lot of King Diamond. I liked the original “Abigail” (reviewed back at Disc 1093) so getting the sequel just made sense. Well, it did at the time.

How It Stacks Up:  I have eight King Diamond albums. I now realize that this is too many King Diamond albums. “Abigail II: The Revenge” is in last place, and will soon be departing the hallowed stacks of my CD library.

Ratings: 2 stars

What is there to say about King Diamond that I haven’t said already – and recently. He’s a crazy face-painting Danish metal star who sings in a high falsetto and writes concept albums that would make great plots for cheesy seventies horror movies.

I love cheesy seventies horror movies, but having listened to so much King Diamond lately, I think I’ve worn myself out. It felt like I was on the final flick of a Hallowe’en marathon at three in the morning when everyone else had already gone to bed. All those crunchy rock riffs were still there, and King Diamond was still going all in to inspire me with his grotesqueries, but I just felt dehydrated and a little tired.

It wasn’t terrible - I was just kind of bored. It was the musical equivalent of falling asleep for twenty minutes of the movie but when you wake up you managing to piece together enough of what is happening that you don’t bother backing it up to see what you missed.

The tale this time revolves around the character of Abigail, who we last saw as a possessed baby eating a corpse before being nailed into some enchanted coffin. Like any bad sequel, “Abigail II” takes all kinds of liberties with the first story to allow all your favourite (?) characters to return. Abigail instead grows up, and the guy who supposedly dies falling down the stairs in the first album is now alive as a creepy middle-aged invalid. Rape and murder ensue, including a guy getting his throat slit by the necklace featured on the 1990 album “The Eye” because - why not? “Abigail II” has more implausible plot twists than Jaws IV.

For all this bat-shittery, there was a fair bit to like about “Abigail II” - mostly the music. Andy LaRocque lays down some badass guitar riffs and wails on some of the better solos. He is the Randy Rhodes to King Diamond’s Ozzy and his skillful playing provides the album the grounding it desperately needs. While a lot of the songs blend into one long conceptual metal soup (which I think is intentional) there are moments where LaRocque will not be denied, crunching along as his lead vocalist gleefully belts out his tale of mayhem and terror.

Unfortunately, the lyrics are hackneyed and obvious and very hard to overlook, with a lot of awkward phrasing and forced rhyme. King Diamond albums always teeter on the edge of overdoing it as they take you on their bizarre carnival experience. Maybe it was playing with fire once too often, or maybe I just got my fill of King Diamond on earlier, better records, but this time I had a harder time enjoying the ride.

Best tracks: Miriam

CD Odyssey Disc 1104: King Diamond

On the walk home today I had a musical accident when my MP3 player slipped through a hole in my pocket into the lining of my coat. I stayed cool under pressure, though, playing out headphone wire until it went slack so I could just let it keep playing. At first, that is.

About a block from the house I couldn’t resist futzing with it any longer, and in attempting to recover the player managed to unplug the headphone jack and plunge it even deeper into the lining. I spent the last few steps on the journey in horrific silence, the terrible realization that the player continued to play from the bowels of my overcoat, with no one to hear its screams.

Why was it screaming, you ask? Well…to understand that you have to know what I was listening to.

Disc 1104 is… The Spider’s Lullabye

Artist: King Diamond

Year of Release: 1995

What’s up with the Cover? I’m not familiar with this species of spider. The King Diamond Widow? The Danish Recluse?

How I Came To Know It: I went a little crazy recently and bought a whole bunch of King Diamond albums. This was one of them.

How It Stacks Up:  I have eight King Diamond albums. Of those eight, I put the Spider’s Lullabye at sixth.

Ratings: 2 stars but almost 3

Well here we go again…more King Diamond  - the Danish metal band that shrieks, freaks and goes all out in its quest for metal glory. It may have come out in 1995, almost ten years into King Diamond’s career, but their commitment to playing traditional symphonic heavy metal, fast and furious and grandiose, remains undiminished.

Yeah, but is it any good? The answer to that is complicated, because there are moments on “Spider’s Lullabye” that are great and had me convinced that it would be remaining in my collection for many years to come. Then I’d hear something that just felt like a tired reworking of stuff I’d heard them do on earlier records and want to turf it.

A lot of King Diamond albums are concept albums, but “Spider’s Lullabye” is a hodgepodge of horror topics. Along the way the band tells the story of out-of-body experiences, ghosts, serial killers, nightmares and a disturbing sanitarium that tortures people with spiders and calls it “therapy.” As a horror writer myself I like this sort of creepy stuff, even if King Diamond handles it with varying degrees of skill.

The album starts on a strong note, with “From the Other Side” describing someone floating above their own body and then realizing to their horror it has been reanimated, but is now possessed by a demon. The music is a galloping Iron Maiden-esque drumbeat and a charging guitar riff that adds urgency to the dreamer’s efforts to return to the world – alas, too late. Such is horror. If you wanted it to end with a bunch of laughs and a wedding, try comedy.

There follows some forgettable songs that feature a combination of amazing guitar work from master Andy Laroque but also Laroque just playing fast without purpose. It can be technically impressive, but on songs like “Dreams” detracts from the churning energy he builds with his riffs. The solos vary between inspired and integral to just tacked on and unnecessary.

Like King Diamond’s scream-style vocals, Laroque’s guitar is an acquired taste and for those who have acquired it will have no problems with some of the musical choices that gave a newbie like me pause.

As on other albums, the lyrics on “The Spider’s Lullabye” can feel a bit forced and literal, but I was impressed with “Six Feet Under,” featuring a man buried in a coffin made of glass. Best line: “My hands are turning blue while my nails are turning red.” Basic stuff, but it does a great job of capturing both the victim’s asphyxiation, and the damage he does to himself as he desperately tries to claw his way out.

The album’s final four songs tell a mini-epic of a man afraid of spiders and gets a lot more than he bargained for from the aversion therapy of the crazy Dr. Eastmann. The eight minute torture sequence in “Room 17” goes on a bit long but otherwise this is a pretty solid short story ending…spoiler alert…in a morgue full of corpses and spiders.

The record benefits from a strong remastering effort by guitarist Larocque. It sounds crisp and loud, but not shouty. Except of course for King Diamond’s vocals, those are a bit shouty, but they are supposed to be.

This was my third King Diamond review in the last eleven albums and at first I was prepared to get rid of it due to fatigue alone. It is a lot of new music to grok in a short period of time, particularly music this dense and complex. However, by the end of my second listen “Spider’s Lullabye” had won me over just enough for me to decide to keep it around…for now.

Best tracks: From the Other Side, Six Feet Under, Eastmann’s Cure

CD Odyssey Disc 1095: King Diamond

I did warn you a couple reviews ago that I overdid it on the King Diamond purchases last year. Now that decision is coming home to roost.

Disc 1095 is… “The Eye”

No I don’t know why the title is in quotation marks.

Artist: King Diamond

Year of Release: 1990

What’s up with the Cover? It’s a spooky necklace. Could this be “The Eye”? Spoiler alert - this necklace is cursed! I would totally wear it anyway, because it is totally bitchin’!

How I Came To Know It: When I blasted through the entire King Diamond discography last year this album was one of the better ones and I was able to get it as part of a cheap 5-disc box-set re-issue.

How It Stacks Up:  I have eight King Diamond albums. Don’t judge me! Anyway, I’ve got a long way to go before I can properly appreciate all eight, but I’m going to take a chance and say “The Eye” is my favourite.

Ratings: 4 stars

It seems like only yesterday that I was going on about the crazy high-voiced metal god that is King Diamond. Actually it was last Wednesday when I reviewed “Abigail”. All the concept album glory of that album is present on “The Eye” but the riffs are tighter, the melodies stronger and the songs more listenable.

This record is a bit more straightforward in its approach to metal, employing a lot of the galloping rhythm of Iron Maiden, crossed with some of the soar of Dio and the crunch of Metallica. I wouldn’t say King Diamond is as good as any of those bands in their prime, but “The Eye” comes close.

The guitar solos occasionally rely too much on pure speed but it is hard to fault Andy Larocque for showing off – the guy can play. He even slows it down on the instrumental “Insanity” and delivers a moody atmospheric song that is just the tonic your ear needs before the album’s final two tracks blast you back into the stratosphere.

This album isn’t quite as focused as “Abigail” in terms of plot, but it is still heavily thematic. In this case the theme is two sets of interconnected stories, the first of which features a cursed necklace called “The Eye”. The album starts with a kind of intro/homage to the necklace, and then gets into what I think is its creation, when a woman is burned as a witch without evidence. Later the Eye pops up in the ashes, promptly killing two children with its evil power. Then we switch gears to follow a nun named Madeleine who is victimized by a creepy priest, goes crazy before we come back to a second song celebrating the necklace.

It's not a single concept album, but rather two stories featuring various innocents suffering fates they don’t deserve at the hands of corrupt authority figures, with a couple bookend tracks loosely holding things together.

The willingness to take even a half step back from full-blown horror musical gives King Diamond the narrative wiggle room to write better lyrics. They aren’t brilliant by any means, but unlike the story-time approach of “Abigail” here we get defined choruses that hold the songs together better.

The opening track is “Eye of the Witch” which is a balls-out riff fest. It is the perfect mix of the crunch of Sabbath, the gallop of Maiden and some kind of doom-laden horror film score.

From there, the album doesn’t let up. The next track, “The Trial (Chambre Ardente)” suffers from a bit too much goofy dialogue, but the chugging riff lets you forgive King Diamond’s excesses and eccentricities.

The third song, “Burn” goes full crazy, with King Diamond exclaiming:

“They say the devil is here tonight

Then let him play his violin so wild”

Followed by some fiendish Bacchanalian style fiddle. Or maybe it is a keyboard – whatever it is, it is the perfect combination of satyr and metal. Generally, the production decisions feel like someone yelled “turn everything up!” but managed to somehow keep it crisp and clean through the excess.

The album has a couple of slower numbers that give the record some variety. Later on there is the aforementioned “Insanity” but before that we get “Two Little Girls” which is the story of two little girls playing the ashes where they burn witches until they find “the Eye” and…promptly die. The song has a genuine creep factor and despite my intellectual dismissal of two kids stupid enough to play in charnel ash I found myself wanting to shout out a warning before it’s too late.

When I reviewed “Abigail” I got a bit nervous about all the King Diamond I’ve bought in the past year, but “The Eye” restored my faith in my former self. This stuff is solid well played power metal. Yes it is a bit over the top, but that’s how metal should be.

Best tracks: Eye of the Witch, Burn, Behind These Walls, The Meetings, Insanity, The Curse

CD Odyssey Disc 1093: King Diamond

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.

Best tracks: Arrival, Abigail, Black Horsemen