CBS SF talks to Mercyful Fate singer King Diamond (Part 1)
SAN FRANCISCO -- One of the most influential metal vocalists to emerge after the 1970s when he first came to fame fronting Danish band Mercyful Fate, King Diamond would rise to even greater success with the horrifying concept albums he delivered with his eponymous band.
With a voice that ranged from a guttural growl to a soaring falsetto and his sinister, corpse-painted visage, Diamond (born Kim Bendix Peterson) and Mercyful Fate were pioneers of early black metal thanks to the anthems heard on the band's seminal early '80s albums Melissa and Don't Break the Oath. Though the band split up by 1985 due to musical differences (reportedly between the singer and guitarist Hank Sherman), it's limited output and ferocious live shows -- particularly their first U.S. tour supporting Motörhead in 1984 -- exerted a major influence on Metallica, Slayer and a host of extreme metal bands that would follow in their wake.
Diamond would form his eponymous band that initially included Fate guitarist Michael Denner and bassist Timi Hansen, releasing its debut album Fatal Portrait in 1986. After that effort, the group went on to explore a more storytelling approach with the acclaimed horror concept efforts Abigail, "Them" and Conspiracy. Always a menacing figure live with his upside-down bone cross mic stand (made from an actual human femur and tibia), King Diamond upped the theatrics by introducing more elaborate stage craft, including costumed actors and illusionist tricks to flesh out his dark, gothic visions when performing.
Mercyful Fate would reunite in 1993, but Diamond managed to record and tour with both groups through the decade until Fate once again went on hiatus in 1999. The singer and his group put put out more successful concept albums with Abigail II and The Puppet Master during the 2000s, but scaled back its touring efforts.
Diamond had a major health scare in 2010 when he underwent triple-bypass surgery after suffering multiple heart attacks. The singer eventually made his first post-operation return to the stage in 2011, performing a medley of Mercyful Fate hits with longtime admirers Metallica and old Fate bandmates Hank Shermann, Michael Denner, and Timi Hansen during Metallica's 30th anniversary shows at The Fillmore.
In 2014, Diamond and his band embarked on their first full tour of the U.S. in a decade to ecstatic audiences before joining Slayer the following summer as part of the last ever Rockstar Mayhem Festival in 2015. The next year, Diamond toured performing his the classic Abigail album in its entirety along with other solo hits and Mercyful Fate tracks, playing metal festivals on both sides of the Atlantic and reestablishing the group as a live juggernaut.
Since then, Diamond has been hard at work on his band's forthcoming new album that was initially set for release in 2020. The Institute will present King Diamond's latest dark tale of madness and misery set in a mental hospital and will mark the band's first new effort in 16 years. In the summer of 2019, the singer also announced the first Mercyful Fate reunion shows that were slated for European festivals in 2020 but were delayed for a full two years due to the COVID-19 pandemic. That major announcement was sadly underscored by the then recent death of former bassist Timi Hansen to cancer.
The downtime led Fate to begin work on what will be its first album of new material in over two decades. Their appearances at a string of metal festivals this past summer -- their first live performances since 1999 -- were greeted by rave reviews as Diamond and the current line-up of Mercyful Fate featuring founding guitarist Hank Shermann, King Diamond band guitarist Mike Wead, drummer Bjarne T. Holm and bassist Joey Vera (Armored Saint, Fates Warning) headlined Sweden Rock, Graspop Metal Meeting, Waken Open Air, Bloodstock among many others. The band was also a headliner at Psycho Las Vegas in August, marking their first concert on U.S. soil in over two decades. CBS SF recently spoke with King Diamond about both of his bands ahead of the current Mercyful Fate fall tour that lands at the Hard Rock Sacramento in Wheatland on October 30.
CBS SF: Word of Mercyful Fate returning to the stage first surfaced in 2019, only to get put on hold by the pandemic. Did the pause push the band to work on new material during the shutdown, or was that already in progress?
King Diamond: We did work on that and we are still working on it, you know, both for King Diamond and Mercyful Fate. So we're working on both bands' new material for full albums for both bands. We did a lot, actually, at that time when we realized that COVID was the thing that was staying for a while. I've got a studio completely built here that is up and running in my house, and so does Hank [Shermann, Mercyful Fate's guitarist] and so does Andy [LaRoque, guitarist in King Diamond]. Of course, he's had a professional studio for a long time.
But everyone else pretty much -- [Mercyful Fate/King Diamond guitarist] Mike Wead has one; I know [King Diamond drummer] Matt Thompson can record his drums at at his own place. Bjarne [T. Holm] for Mercyful Fate will go into a studio in outside of Copenhagen; that's where he's been recording drums for for the new songs, like. "The Jackal of Salzburg" we've been playing live without having it recorded. But after we finished in Las Vegas, he's been recording the proper version of the drums.
We have it ready now for us to go forward, but there's so much going on because we're getting very close to the tour. There's all kinds of promo things going on, we had to find a stand-in bass player for Joey [Vera]. So many things just...I wouldn't say collide, but there's so much going on right now. There's the stage production, which was never finished; you will see the finished version. That'll be first time, in the U.S., that it is finally finished. I saw yesterday, the last two gothic arches that are going to be added. It's in Poland. Right now they were deciding where to put a couple of sixes on them. It's going to be on the second floor of the production.
And that has been the idea the whole time, but because of COVID, it's been very hard to do. Practically everything we have to do when it comes to touring, you know? I mean, finding trucks, finding crew, finding drivers for buses and trucks. Everything is ridiculous. And materials for these companies that build productions, they're like, "Yeah, we have people here now actually, but we have no materials." And the other way, sometimes where they say, "Well, we don't have enough people to work here. So you have to wait. We're backed up, big time."
And that was the case here with this stuff. We had to go to Poland, where we knew, from our friends in Behemoth, that they are using somebody there that has done amazing job for them. So they were very highly recommended. So we went to them to do some of the stuff. There's this sigil on the front of our big altar, and the big cross we have up above our altar, those were made by them. There's a new cross that they made that was used for the first time in Las Vegas, but it wasn't used properly there because the place was too small; it had low ceilings. So we had to put it all the way in the back on a lighting rig and it looked smaller than it really is. It didn't have the right proportion and wasn't the right place and wasn't lit up properly, all these things.
But now it's here and the two arches will be flown over, the two arches that will be standing on the stairs as part of the upper level, and that will complete it finally. So it's actually a bigger production than we had for the European festivals. The set we used, it still sits over there in Europe. And we flew copies of some of the things over to the U.S. and a company in LA built us the production for Las Vegas. So we have productions both in Europe and the U.S., which is really good. It's costly, but it's very efficient for the future, because there will be shows that we would otherwise have said no to that we can now do.
We played the last show, the 18th show in Europe, was in at the Bloodstock Festival in England, right outside Birmingham. And the next show, one week later was Las Vegas. The full show, practically the same show there, except for as I said we couldn't place some things the same way. And now we've added more to it to have it finally completed. So it's getting complicated, but it's gonna be nice for the future, because we will be able to do more shows. Before, we would have to send the set on a two-month container ride. and nowadays, those are three times the price they used to be with no guarantee they will make it in time. Sometimes they just can't find containers for you.
CBS SF: I was wondering how that was going to work. Because I would imagine for the European festivals, you've got a really big stage set. I wasn't sure if it would be the same production, but it sounds it essentially is. I'm very excited to get to see Mercyful Fate again. I think the last time was in the early 1990s in Oakland, you played the Omni, which has long since closed. Though I've seen you a bunch with your band since you've been back on the road.
King Diamond: Yeah, and that's gonna continue. It was supposed to have been King Diamond right now. The plans from the record label, they they are standing firm on what the plans were in 2019, even though we got postponed and postponed. They still want the full King Diamond album coming out next. And that's what we also want to do. The production that we're going to with King Diamond is going to be something totally unique. I mean, even our own lighting engineer is saying, "Oh man, I'm so excited, because I've never done anything like that before!" That's for The Institute, which will be a two-album story.
And we're changing everything around with that actually. We have a brand new cover, not what people saw when we were out touring in 2019. We had one song -- "The Masquerade of Madness" -- is not going to be on the album. It's going to be all new songs on the album, so it's fresh. Wow! There's so much enthusiasm behind what we're doing and we found the right way of doing things. Also, with the help of new management -- we signed up with the IB -- and it's opened a lot of doors that we really have haven't used for a long time. It's made more things possible now.
So King Diamond was not ready with a full album right now. We could have done two or three new songs live, but that doesn't work for this production. We would waste it. What do we do when we when the album comes out, the real one? I mean, that's where this has to be. Because it fits. So we had to say to them, "We're not ready to tour now with King Diamond. We have to have the full album out." We cannot do this flip flop, whatever, anymore. It's got to be the real deal. We owe everybody that.
But suddenly there was a little room where the booking agent -- who is the same for King Diamond and Mercyful Fate -- he said, "Can you do maybe a short Mercyful Fate tour in the U.S. after Las Vegas is over and all this stuff? There might be time enough, even though you're writing for both bands?" And I said, "Yeah, guess it could be. It would be very short notice. Everybody would want more time to prepare properly." But it looks like it's going to work out anyway despite the short notice. We're just going to get out there and do it.
CBS SF: How different is the writing experience between working with the Hank Sherman again in Mercyful Fate versus the writing process you have with your own band?
King Diamond: The process is very much the same, but I write, of course, differently for Mercyful Fate than I do for King Diamond. I think in different ways. In King Diamond, I would say even the writing becomes more theatrical than with Mercyful Fate because I know that we have actors, we have all these things that are going to happen on stage. And Andy knows that too. I had the story for The Institute and he has heard the story. He sent me eight songs. They are not finished. I think two of them are close to being finished on the musical side, from him. I have a bunch of stuff. But it's the same thing that happens; Andy comes with songs, Hank brought me 10 songs.
We are working on song number two at the same time as we are working on the first one that will be the single that comes out probably right after this tour. We have gotten so close with it. But typically with Mercyful Fate, Hank comes with a new song and it's not quite finished. It might have an intro and an outro but it's not quite done. I write my own songs of course, but with the collaborative stuff, he brings me the song and I become the man with the scalpel, kind of. I cut this part here and then say, "Copy and paste here!" and "Can be used that solo piece to sing? Because it's much better than this other thing." and so on. And it's always been like that. That's how we did Don't Break the Oath. It's exactly the same mood in what we're doing right now between us.
So it's easy. It's fun to actually really experience this thing this way, because it's straight what we used to do. And I will call Hank -- when he brought "The Jackal of Salzburg" it was about seven minutes and 24 seconds, I think, and now it's eight minutes and 54 seconds. That's just how it happens. Sometimes it goes the other way, you know? And it's happens with Andy too. When he brings me stuff, are there certain things I will hear. "Oh man, that's not good for a verse. I need more of this and more of that." He might try and change something. Or I will give him a suggestion like, "Could you try maybe this or that? Or move it to this key? Or can we split this up in half here?" We do these things and it comes back from them the next time and I'll say, "Ooooooh, that's much better for me now!"
And they hear it themselves too, you know? After the scalpel has been out there, they'll say, "Oh wow! Now this really is coming together in a cool way!" I have a very good ability there to do these things. There's a second song we're working on, it's about four minutes long, for Mercyful Fate, and it's also amazing. It's so old fashioned in style, I really like it. And the same thing goes for the King Diamond songs, where it's back to my philosophy with vocals where all vocals are lead vocals. That's how I used to see it always.
But there was a period where it was kind of like you get told, "Maybe you don't need to do so much with those backing vocals. You have the lead here." That's not how I see it. Sometimes I like it quiet and condensing from right to left through the whole stereo picture if that's what creates the right feel for it. So I'll do anything to create these crazy things that I feel belong there. And that goes back to all the vocals being lead vocals. It's got to be full power. And the same with other things too, the guitar solos. It's very, very old feeling we have back for both bands, which is it's so refreshing. It's really nice.
CBS SF: I imagine in the modern era, you must have done some remote working as far as file sharing in the past, but certainly the pandemic must have like really amplified that, since for a while you could only work remotely, so how else are you going to approach it?
King Diamond: Yeah, and going back and forth is fast. It's because we each sit in our own home studio. We don't have to go into a studio to record. It's only with Bjarne that they go into a real studio to cut his drums. Matt [Thompson, drummer for King Diamond] might go into a studio too, but he has a totally capable studio himself. The rest of the guys, they all have their own studios. I mean Pontus [Egberg, bassist in King Diamond] basically has his own studio. Joey has his own studio. He helped the stand-in bass player Becky Baldwin from from Birmingham, the girl who is filling in on the tour, he helped her by re-recording the bass from one of the recent live shows, I think it was Wacken.
The way he approached everything when he joined the band was stay true to what Timi Hansen did. Timmy has left us, but he [Vera] had the opportunity when we played Copenhell to actually meet Timi's daughter and stuff. So there's really some good feelings that she could see him play Timi's stuff. And he's bringing that same joy over to Becky and showing her how he plays all the things. Because sometimes it can be hard to hear what's going on on the original albums with the baselines. Both of them [Vera and Baldwin] play with their fingers and have that same growl that Timi had with his bass, so it's very authentic.
Mercyful Fate brings its fall tour with German thrashers Kreator and Cleveland-based blackened speed-metal band Midnight to the Hard Rock Sacramento in Wheatland on October 30. You can also read Part 2 of this interview where Diamond discusses the history behind the new song "The Jackal of Salzburg" and why guitarist Michael Denner is not part of Fate's current line-up..
