King Diamond Interview

King Diamond

I remember how I liked Mercyful Fate's second album "Don't Break The Oath" and how devastated I was when the news came that Mercyful Fate no longer existed. What I thought was the beginning of something glorious with that second album turned out to be a swansong instead. With the demise of Mercyful Fate the band Fate (made up of some MF members) came along but instead of continuing in the old style this band opted for a more AOR kind of sound. When King Diamond (the person) also returned to the music scene with his band King Diamond I didn't at first bother to check them out. Because of this I missed out on the first two albums ("Fatal Portrait" and "Abigail") and only caught on to them with "Them". The characteristic King Diamond way of singing was still there but the music wasn't anything like Mercyful Fate. Still, a King Diamond was better than no Mercyful Fate and I've been a fan ever since. With 2002 a new King Diamond album has been released. This time he's gone for a continuation of the Abigail story, only set 18 years later in time.
I don't have any musical heroes or role models but if I had King Diamond would be one of them, so when the opportunity to interview him came along I couldn't really pass on it, could I?

-Anders Ekdahl

The new King Diamond album is called "Abigail II - The Revenge". How long have you had this idea to make a sequel to the first Abigail album?
- About 3 years ago there were an awful lot of fans that asked why we didn't make an album just like "Abigail". I've always said that that is something we can't do. We can't just go back and copy. We have to look forward and progress. But the fans kept asking, which made me start to think if there was any way to continue the story. I found that there was a foundation to go deeper than the first.
- The reason we didn't do it 3 years ago has a lot to do with the line-up. Andy and I have always written from the heart but there have been things were we've thought that: "This line-up will not manage this". So we've passed on certain things. Now with Matt Thompson in the band we have a drummer as skilled as Mikkey Dee. He has a bit different style but the same level of skills. He has so many own ideas. Then we had Hal Patino back on bass. He's my favourite bass player. We also have Mike Wead from Mercyful Fate on guitar. The solos he plays on this album are just unbelievable good. This line-up did the European "House Of God" tour and it was at that point in time we said that we could write the songs any way we wanted. That's also the reason why this is more like the old albums.
- The way you produce today is different. You can't produce today like you did earlier. The music is just as complex as it was back then. There are some arrangements that are more complex than anything we've done before. There are places where four different melodies are playing at the same time. There is also much more vocals than on anything I've done before. Much more backing vocals. On the basis of the way the songs were written, when the band entered the studio it was the first time we got to hear the way the songs would turn out. That gave me so much extra inspiration that I came up with new things I wanted to add. That's also the reason why we were delayed in the studio.
- I think it's just as complex as the old one but the sound is much better and the playing is much better. There's also a deeper story, a much more theatrical depth both in the music and the lyrics. You hear Abigail's voice on the album. You hear Little One's voice, that was a little 6 year girl we got to talk and cry in the studio. I know that this is what I'm most proud of. It's the best production I've been involved with ever. So therefor we don't feel it's a chance to call the album "Abigail". Otherwise it would have been a chance calling the album "Abigail".

Did it never feel strange to go back to the first "Abigail" album and then write something new based on the old concept?
- This is something totally different. The only thing is that the story continues exactly where it left off last time. The persons are totally different this time. Back then Abigail was a little innocent baby. She had been born to a virgin mother, so to speak. Jonathan isn't her father. The pregnancy happened over night. In this new story Abigail is 18 and Jonathan is 45 and he's a whole different person from the one who fell down the stairs in the first story. Now he can't really walk and he uses a cane to drag his feet across the floor. Most of the time he sits in his wheel chair. The other two persons that are main characters are Brandon Henry - the caretaker of the house and Little One who is the unborn child from Abigail's birth and who now is mummified and who is haunting the house. The mummified child corpse is kept in the crypt of the house. But it has started to walk about in the house. You'll find out why Abigail has come to the house. In the first 5 or 6 songs you'll get to know Abigail and then all of a sudden she changes completely. Why that is you'll find out.

When you write these concepts for a new King Diamond album, are they solely based on your own imagination or do you use local folklore too and/or things from the real world?
- To me it seems every thing comes from me but that's probably not the whole truth. I sit in kind of like a factory. In a factory you have a lot of different materials and from that you make another thing, a product.
- Everything that goes on around you inspires you. It enters through the ears and then something happens in the brain and it comes out differently when you think about things. It can be things I see in my daily life, like how people treat each other.
- Most of the old stories, even if they're horror stories, if you look at the human side of them they always go deeper into the human aspect, how people treat each other in certain situations, how far they are willing to go and how they defend their actions. Take a simple thing like a young girl giving herself to a man for the first time and the guy only wants to get in bed with her and she thinks that that was it. Afterwards she regrets it terribly. We've all heard about things like that and probably seen it on TV a thousand times.
- Abigail is forced to marry Jonathan in the story. You hear her cry in-between 2 songs. That will most likely get many of our female fans to remember things. All of a sudden they'll remember something and think that they're lucky it's no longer like that. So there's a lot of philosophy. It can be taken from daily life. It doesn't matter if it's from the 1800s or the 1500s. It's all about basic human emotions. They are the same today as they were then, like pride. - -
- The way human beings are we've always been. It doesn't matter if we drive cars or ride horses. We still act on the same basic notion towards each other. I get lots of things from that. It's not things like a man helping his wife. I don't think about things like that. The things you see if you walk around with open eyes and an open mind can be very useful. You store them to use whenever they're needed. It's not like I sit and think: "What was it I saw the other day?". You do that automatically, especially if you have an open mind and look around yourself and really listen to what's going on. That way you get a lot more impulses. You'll never run out of new impulses because people are so complicated emotionally that it can be used in my stories. I would never ever say that this or that is right or wrong. I respect that people have different opinions about different things. Some people don't think it's wrong to park your car in the handicap zone just to stop off at the band for five minutes. Some might say that you can not do that because you take up space for somebody who'll need it. There are different opinions on what's OK and what's not. That's why we have laws to keep order of things, not that you always obey them.
-There's a lot of inspiration. I can't say that it just comes from one place or other. That's impossible to tell. It has nothing to do with things I might have experienced 2 years ago. It's hard to tell where everything I have inside me comes from.

Whenever a new King Diamond album is released it's expected to be a certain way. Do you not feel that you'd want to do something completely different?
- Different? If I want to write about riding a motor cycle or something like that? That I can't do. I need to do something I feel 100% into. When I have created the persons and the moods they're in, I know exactly what they feel, why they do the things they do. That's how deep I go into my characters when I created them. I don't know if you could say that it's me that control them. You get feelings for them when you write about them. Just like when a writer writes a new book. It has to be something I care about.
- I love horror, I've always done. The mysterious, the occult, the things we know nothing about. I've always been fascinated by people and the lack of respect they have for each other. I mix that a lot with what you can call a life philosophy. I add that to the different characters I create and they'll be put in a horror setting. I create a mix of all the things I like. I don't ride a motor cycle and I don't think I could sing the same way if I'm not into it 100%.
- When I have a little time over I listen to my collection of records from the beginning of the 70s. It's not enough for me to sing about the things they sing about.
- The style has to be this way but he story is new and unique. Even if you take some of the characters that was created a long time ago they're different people now because it's 18 years later. You can't say that one single character on this new album is the same. You can't say that Abigail is the same, or that Jonathan is the same way he was on the first one. The only thing you know about Little One is that she was mummified and put in the crypt. In the booklet there's a family tree of people to make it all fit together. So that people reading it can see that he married her and things like that.

It has often been mentioned that the stories you write would suit the big screen. Will we ever see a horror movie with a script by King Diamond?
- There are a couple of stories I 'd like to see on the big screen. I could imagine that if a really good movie company took it on that they could make a really scary horror movie. I don't have any connections in that business. For me that is like being in a band that has just started and is about to record their first demo and who sends the demo to labels and it ending up in the trash can. It's hard to sell the idea of them doing a movie. Maybe one day I'll get lucky. The situation I'm in is that I'd like for it to happen. The easiest way is probably if you write a book, if you put the stories in a book. Then you can give them a book that they can look at. You very seldom hear about a movie being based on a record. I think it could be done. It's just a question of having the right connections.

You never thought about filming short stories to go with each track of the new album and then have it released on DVD?
- That would be just as expensive as making a movie. The label would never ever spend money on something like that. I don't even think that they have that kind of money. Then they would have to find someone to invest the money. It would be a dream come true for me. Maybe if you were the biggest band on Sony then they might have the money to do something like that. Metal Blade hardly has money for a video. You still can have you video played on metal shows in Europe but in the US there's no metal on TV. MTV and VH1 might feature a report when Ozzy makes a new album but that's about it. It's too much money for the label.

If your imagination should run dry do you have a favourite book or movie that you return to knowing that it'll spark your imagination?
- No, not really. I have a lot of favourite movies. When we start the process I do everything I can not to be inspired by anything at all when I write. When I get ready to start recording in my music room I don't listen to any music at all. I don't want to be inspired by anything. As a musician you get easily influenced. After you've been working on the same riff for three days you might put on a Black Sabbath album and then you return to recording and you automatically start to play like Black Sabbath. I don't want to be inspired by anything but myself. If I listen to one of our albums, which I nearly never do, I can hear in the music and the vocals exactly what I felt at that time. The same goes for the lyrics and stories. I do everything not to be inspired by anything outside. I don't sit and say to myself: "That's a good movie, I think I'll borrow this or that".

Now that both Mercyful Fate and King Diamond are on Metal Blade, what advantages are there with doing so?
- There are no advantages to having the two bands on the same label. That King Diamond is signed to Metal Blade world-wide has more to do with that we had fulfilled our deals with Metal Blade and Massacre and we were about to negotiate a new deal. Metal Blade came with an offer that was better. I don't have anything against Massacre. They've always treated us fair.
- There's talk about Metal Blade wanting to do a live LP, a triple and that it will be recorded on the tour that follows. We want to do it so that it'll be a presentation of the Abigail story live. We'll play 80 - 90% of both Abigail albums and try to do it as theatrical as possible. In between the two albums we'll play three songs from the old albums, as a sort of intermission. We will have four different intermission sets. That'll make it possible to have an album called "Live - Abigail" on two discs and a third with old songs. That's the plan for now. There's also talk about doing a DVD for that tour too. That's the advantage, especially now that you don't do videos anymore. The budget was too big for Massacre to alone do a video and just have it released in Europe. Metal Blade didn't want to spend money on something that was just going to be shown in the States. That was the problem before. They didn't want to pick up the bill alone. Now they're interested in doing a DVD because that one can also be played in Europe. But that is something we'll have to negotiate but I think it's a good idea to do a DVD too.

Members have come and gone in King Diamond and many have been from Swedes and from Gothenburg, Sweden. Are there any specific reasons why it's been this?
- They've known each other. When Andy joined we were in the studio for the "Fatal Portrait" and he was a friend of Mikkey. We had a guitar player but he was always out drinking and partied. He was never prepared. He got a warning that if he couldn't play his stuff when we entered the studio he was out and he couldn't. So we were only four, Mikkey Dee, Timi Hansen, Michael Denner and I. We needed a guitar player. Mikkey said that he knew this guy and you should hear him. We asked Andy if he could come down to Copenhagen, Denmark. He came into the studio with his guitar and we told him this is the song, play whatever you like. He listened to it twice and then he played his solo, and that's one of the solos that is on "Dressed In White". Andy knew Pete Blakk and that's how it's been ever since. Mike Wead is from Stockholm, isn't he? We're talking about five members that have come from Gothenburg and one from Stockholm.

Do you ever reflect on the fact that you have become an icon for a whole generation of metal fans?
- No, I don't think about that at all. When you say it I think about it. In the beginning I didn't think about if we were heavy metal or heavy rock. We just played progressive and with many changes. When something like a tribute CD is released I think about it when all bands in the booklet writes that they've been inspired.
- I had to go out and buy a guitar when I heard Jimmy Page guitar sound on the first Led Zeppelin album. I knew nothing about guitars but I knew I had to have one. I didn't know that you had to have an amplifier. I came home and didn't understand why it didn't make a sound, until somebody told me I had to buy an amplifier too. But I never tried to sound like Led Zeppelin. It warms my heart to hear that so many have been inspired. That gets you thinking that: "Wow we've had some influence on what's happening in the music business". It's cool to know but it's nothing I go and think about.


	..........

		King Diamond I remember how I liked Mercyful Fate's second album "Don't Break The Oath" and how devastated I was when the news came that Mercyful Fate no longer existed. What I thought was the beginning of something glorious with that second album turned out to be a swansong instead. With the demise of Mercyful Fate the band Fate (made up of some MF members) came along but instead of continuing in the old style this band opted for a more AOR kind of sound. When King Diamond (the person) also returned to the music scene with his band King Diamond I didn't at first bother to check them out. Because of this I missed out on the first two albums ("Fatal Portrait" and "Abigail") and only caught on to them with "Them". The characteristic King Diamond way of singing was still there but the music wasn't anything like Mercyful Fate. Still, a King Diamond was better than no Mercyful Fate and I've been a fan ever since. With 2002 a new King Diamond album has been released. This time he's gone for a continuation of the Abigail story, only set 18 years later in time. I don't have any musical heroes or role models but if I had King Diamond would be one of them, so when the opportunity to interview him came along I couldn't really pass on it, could I? -Anders Ekdahl The new King Diamond album is called "Abigail II - The Revenge". How long have you had this idea to make a sequel to the first Abigail album? - About 3 years ago there were an awful lot of fans that asked why we didn't make an album just like "Abigail". I've always said that that is something we can't do. We can't just go back and copy. We have to look forward and progress. But the fans kept asking, which made me start to think if there was any way to continue the story. I found that there was a foundation to go deeper than the first. - The reason we didn't do it 3 years ago has a lot to do with the line-up. Andy and I have always written from the heart but there have been things were we've thought that: "This line-up will not manage this". So we've passed on certain things. Now with Matt Thompson in the band we have a drummer as skilled as Mikkey Dee. He has a bit different style but the same level of skills. He has so many own ideas. Then we had Hal Patino back on bass. He's my favourite bass player. We also have Mike Wead from Mercyful Fate on guitar. The solos he plays on this album are just unbelievable good. This line-up did the European "House Of God" tour and it was at that point in time we said that we could write the songs any way we wanted. That's also the reason why this is more like the old albums. - The way you produce today is different. You can't produce today like you did earlier. The music is just as complex as it was back then. There are some arrangements that are more complex than anything we've done before. There are places where four different melodies are playing at the same time. There is also much more vocals than on anything I've done before. Much more backing vocals. On the basis of the way the songs were written, when the band entered the studio it was the first time we got to hear the way the songs would turn out. That gave me so much extra inspiration that I came up with new things I wanted to add. That's also the reason why we were delayed in the studio. - I think it's just as complex as the old one but the sound is much better and the playing is much better. There's also a deeper story, a much more theatrical depth both in the music and the lyrics. You hear Abigail's voice on the album. You hear Little One's voice, that was a little 6 year girl we got to talk and cry in the studio. I know that this is what I'm most proud of. It's the best production I've been involved with ever. So therefor we don't feel it's a chance to call the album "Abigail". Otherwise it would have been a chance calling the album "Abigail". Did it never feel strange to go back to the first "Abigail" album and then write something new based on the old concept? - This is something totally different. The only thing is that the story continues exactly where it left off last time. The persons are totally different this time. Back then Abigail was a little innocent baby. She had been born to a virgin mother, so to speak. Jonathan isn't her father. The pregnancy happened over night. In this new story Abigail is 18 and Jonathan is 45 and he's a whole different person from the one who fell down the stairs in the first story. Now he can't really walk and he uses a cane to drag his feet across the floor. Most of the time he sits in his wheel chair. The other two persons that are main characters are Brandon Henry - the caretaker of the house and Little One who is the unborn child from Abigail's birth and who now is mummified and who is haunting the house. The mummified child corpse is kept in the crypt of the house. But it has started to walk about in the house. You'll find out why Abigail has come to the house. In the first 5 or 6 songs you'll get to know Abigail and then all of a sudden she changes completely. Why that is you'll find out. When you write these concepts for a new King Diamond album, are they solely based on your own imagination or do you use local folklore too and/or things from the real world? - To me it seems every thing comes from me but that's probably not the whole truth. I sit in kind of like a factory. In a factory you have a lot of different materials and from that you make another thing, a product. - Everything that goes on around you inspires you. It enters through the ears and then something happens in the brain and it comes out differently when you think about things. It can be things I see in my daily life, like how people treat each other. - Most of the old stories, even if they're horror stories, if you look at the human side of them they always go deeper into the human aspect, how people treat each other in certain situations, how far they are willing to go and how they defend their actions. Take a simple thing like a young girl giving herself to a man for the first time and the guy only wants to get in bed with her and she thinks that that was it. Afterwards she regrets it terribly. We've all heard about things like that and probably seen it on TV a thousand times. - Abigail is forced to marry Jonathan in the story. You hear her cry in-between 2 songs. That will most likely get many of our female fans to remember things. All of a sudden they'll remember something and think that they're lucky it's no longer like that. So there's a lot of philosophy. It can be taken from daily life. It doesn't matter if it's from the 1800s or the 1500s. It's all about basic human emotions. They are the same today as they were then, like pride. - - - The way human beings are we've always been. It doesn't matter if we drive cars or ride horses. We still act on the same basic notion towards each other. I get lots of things from that. It's not things like a man helping his wife. I don't think about things like that. The things you see if you walk around with open eyes and an open mind can be very useful. You store them to use whenever they're needed. It's not like I sit and think: "What was it I saw the other day?". You do that automatically, especially if you have an open mind and look around yourself and really listen to what's going on. That way you get a lot more impulses. You'll never run out of new impulses because people are so complicated emotionally that it can be used in my stories. I would never ever say that this or that is right or wrong. I respect that people have different opinions about different things. Some people don't think it's wrong to park your car in the handicap zone just to stop off at the band for five minutes. Some might say that you can not do that because you take up space for somebody who'll need it. There are different opinions on what's OK and what's not. That's why we have laws to keep order of things, not that you always obey them. -There's a lot of inspiration. I can't say that it just comes from one place or other. That's impossible to tell. It has nothing to do with things I might have experienced 2 years ago. It's hard to tell where everything I have inside me comes from. Whenever a new King Diamond album is released it's expected to be a certain way. Do you not feel that you'd want to do something completely different? - Different? If I want to write about riding a motor cycle or something like that? That I can't do. I need to do something I feel 100% into. When I have created the persons and the moods they're in, I know exactly what they feel, why they do the things they do. That's how deep I go into my characters when I created them. I don't know if you could say that it's me that control them. You get feelings for them when you write about them. Just like when a writer writes a new book. It has to be something I care about. - I love horror, I've always done. The mysterious, the occult, the things we know nothing about. I've always been fascinated by people and the lack of respect they have for each other. I mix that a lot with what you can call a life philosophy. I add that to the different characters I create and they'll be put in a horror setting. I create a mix of all the things I like. I don't ride a motor cycle and I don't think I could sing the same way if I'm not into it 100%. - When I have a little time over I listen to my collection of records from the beginning of the 70s. It's not enough for me to sing about the things they sing about. - The style has to be this way but he story is new and unique. Even if you take some of the characters that was created a long time ago they're different people now because it's 18 years later. You can't say that one single character on this new album is the same. You can't say that Abigail is the same, or that Jonathan is the same way he was on the first one. The only thing you know about Little One is that she was mummified and put in the crypt. In the booklet there's a family tree of people to make it all fit together. So that people reading it can see that he married her and things like that. It has often been mentioned that the stories you write would suit the big screen. Will we ever see a horror movie with a script by King Diamond? - There are a couple of stories I 'd like to see on the big screen. I could imagine that if a really good movie company took it on that they could make a really scary horror movie. I don't have any connections in that business. For me that is like being in a band that has just started and is about to record their first demo and who sends the demo to labels and it ending up in the trash can. It's hard to sell the idea of them doing a movie. Maybe one day I'll get lucky. The situation I'm in is that I'd like for it to happen. The easiest way is probably if you write a book, if you put the stories in a book. Then you can give them a book that they can look at. You very seldom hear about a movie being based on a record. I think it could be done. It's just a question of having the right connections. You never thought about filming short stories to go with each track of the new album and then have it released on DVD? - That would be just as expensive as making a movie. The label would never ever spend money on something like that. I don't even think that they have that kind of money. Then they would have to find someone to invest the money. It would be a dream come true for me. Maybe if you were the biggest band on Sony then they might have the money to do something like that. Metal Blade hardly has money for a video. You still can have you video played on metal shows in Europe but in the US there's no metal on TV. MTV and VH1 might feature a report when Ozzy makes a new album but that's about it. It's too much money for the label. If your imagination should run dry do you have a favourite book or movie that you return to knowing that it'll spark your imagination? - No, not really. I have a lot of favourite movies. When we start the process I do everything I can not to be inspired by anything at all when I write. When I get ready to start recording in my music room I don't listen to any music at all. I don't want to be inspired by anything. As a musician you get easily influenced. After you've been working on the same riff for three days you might put on a Black Sabbath album and then you return to recording and you automatically start to play like Black Sabbath. I don't want to be inspired by anything but myself. If I listen to one of our albums, which I nearly never do, I can hear in the music and the vocals exactly what I felt at that time. The same goes for the lyrics and stories. I do everything not to be inspired by anything outside. I don't sit and say to myself: "That's a good movie, I think I'll borrow this or that". Now that both Mercyful Fate and King Diamond are on Metal Blade, what advantages are there with doing so? - There are no advantages to having the two bands on the same label. That King Diamond is signed to Metal Blade world-wide has more to do with that we had fulfilled our deals with Metal Blade and Massacre and we were about to negotiate a new deal. Metal Blade came with an offer that was better. I don't have anything against Massacre. They've always treated us fair. - There's talk about Metal Blade wanting to do a live LP, a triple and that it will be recorded on the tour that follows. We want to do it so that it'll be a presentation of the Abigail story live. We'll play 80 - 90% of both Abigail albums and try to do it as theatrical as possible. In between the two albums we'll play three songs from the old albums, as a sort of intermission. We will have four different intermission sets. That'll make it possible to have an album called "Live - Abigail" on two discs and a third with old songs. That's the plan for now. There's also talk about doing a DVD for that tour too. That's the advantage, especially now that you don't do videos anymore. The budget was too big for Massacre to alone do a video and just have it released in Europe. Metal Blade didn't want to spend money on something that was just going to be shown in the States. That was the problem before. They didn't want to pick up the bill alone. Now they're interested in doing a DVD because that one can also be played in Europe. But that is something we'll have to negotiate but I think it's a good idea to do a DVD too. Members have come and gone in King Diamond and many have been from Swedes and from Gothenburg, Sweden. Are there any specific reasons why it's been this? - They've known each other. When Andy joined we were in the studio for the "Fatal Portrait" and he was a friend of Mikkey. We had a guitar player but he was always out drinking and partied. He was never prepared. He got a warning that if he couldn't play his stuff when we entered the studio he was out and he couldn't. So we were only four, Mikkey Dee, Timi Hansen, Michael Denner and I. We needed a guitar player. Mikkey said that he knew this guy and you should hear him. We asked Andy if he could come down to Copenhagen, Denmark. He came into the studio with his guitar and we told him this is the song, play whatever you like. He listened to it twice and then he played his solo, and that's one of the solos that is on "Dressed In White". Andy knew Pete Blakk and that's how it's been ever since. Mike Wead is from Stockholm, isn't he? We're talking about five members that have come from Gothenburg and one from Stockholm. Do you ever reflect on the fact that you have become an icon for a whole generation of metal fans? - No, I don't think about that at all. When you say it I think about it. In the beginning I didn't think about if we were heavy metal or heavy rock. We just played progressive and with many changes. When something like a tribute CD is released I think about it when all bands in the booklet writes that they've been inspired. - I had to go out and buy a guitar when I heard Jimmy Page guitar sound on the first Led Zeppelin album. I knew nothing about guitars but I knew I had to have one. I didn't know that you had to have an amplifier. I came home and didn't understand why it didn't make a sound, until somebody told me I had to buy an amplifier too. But I never tried to sound like Led Zeppelin. It warms my heart to hear that so many have been inspired. That gets you thinking that: "Wow we've had some influence on what's happening in the music business". It's cool to know but it's nothing I go and think about.