Join me for part 2 of my Exclusive chat with legendary black metal frontman King Diamond as we talk about his supernatural experiences, horror movies, their awesome stage production, and whether we’ll ever see Mercyful Fate back together again!
If you missed Part 1 of my King Diamond interview, you can read that here!
Horror Society: King, one of the things that originally drew me to the band 30 years ago was the horror elements. How has horror influenced you in your career?
King Diamond: Well, I can pick from real life most of the time. If I want horror, I just have to look around and see it. Then again, it’s a mix of horror, the supernatural, which I’ve had so many experiences with and then also the satanic life philosophy which cuts through, especially with King Diamond and the stories. There are so many things, how people treat each other that you can just pick from everyday life. Just have your eyes open, be open minded. I’m always waiting to have a discussion or a talk or listen to other people’s ideas and opinions. You are never smart enough or good enough, you can always be better. It’s always going to be like that for me you know. There are so many things that happened where I used to live. I was in a haunted apartment in Copenhagen for many years. A lot of the horror came from there, real experiences but then modified to fit and that’s what I’ve done so many times. I modify what is real and has been real to me. It’s those things I can relate to very strongly and put all my emotions into getting them out. For example, “Grandma”, I had a grandma that was really bad. I took that straight from some of my mother’s stories and modified it to fit into the story. There is so much – I had a wolf that I had from a puppy to one year. It was a gift from my ex-wife a long time ago. It was in our backyard, but it got too big and was given back to the pack it came from. Man, I bonded with it and had a great time and it was part of what was put into the album “House of God”. ‘Angel’, that was the name. That’s taken straight from there. ‘Goodbye’ is the day that I had to say goodbye to it. I bonded with it, but my wife never did. It was a rough playmate in the yard. It had to be a very secure yard and you could not have it free. It got up to my hip and it got really big, and had to be given back to the pack where it came from. Also, the crazy things, the horror stuff, I don’t know what you can say but it has always been with me. We have stuff here in our house where I am now. It doesn’t happen often, but there are things. On our fan club site, there is a picture from Sweden Rock Festival which shows a parallel universe or something like that, because it can’t be explained. The picture shows me sitting down on a drum riser and you’re supposed to see our actress dressed in all black for a song from the last album, a song called ‘Shades of Black’. She is in full black suit, even her face is black, and you can’t see anything, just black shape. She’s moving around me throughout the song and it gets darker and darker, we actually present the song in black and white, we use no colors on stage, just black and white and it gets darker and darker throughout. Towards the end, I have a lantern where I blow out the candle at the end, its part of the story. She is behind me there and what you see in the picture is, you see one of her legs up to the thigh is like its cut right off up to the thigh. There’s no more of her then that one leg. Everything’s confirmed that it’s her leg, but its cut right through the thigh. There’s no way that she could’ve moved the rest of her body so fast that it would create a blur, there is no blur, it’s a straight cutoff. There is no double exposure, it’s a digital camera. We even went so far as to upload it for the fans to this site and when you do that you get all the settings of the camera in there as well. Everybody could see exactly what the camera was set at, there’s no trickery, and nothing was done by us. Someone else actually had it examined and got the result that I knew it would get that nothing had been manipulated. There is also a shadow that looks like a shadow from that leg, but when you zoom in on it, it looks totally like a hole. So that’s very odd, it doesn’t make sense. There’s no logic in that picture, it’s totally unexplainable.
We had another picture that I’m convinced shows a ghost, from when we were participating in Metallica’s 30th 
anniversary. At the hotel we stayed at the night we arrived, Brian Slagel was there, Hank Sherman, Michael Denner and Timmy Hansen, I was there and my wife was there. We were the only ones that were left at the hotel bar late at night there. There is a see through person in the back walking in behind the bar. You see straight through the person, but the outline is very sharp. You can see my hand in the picture moving, totally blurry. It doesn’t make sense, unless it’s a ghost. There is no other explanation there. It’s not the first time that I’ve had these experiences in my life. Here in the house too, some of them are little innocent funny things, others things are more serious, a little bigger. I had here in the house at one point, my father-in-law was here and my wife’s whole family was here at Christmas once. Her dad knows that I’m very fascinated by World War II; my dad participated as a freedom fighter in Denmark and had to flee to Sweden. He became part of the Danish brigade and a lot of blah blah, but a lot of interesting stuff for me. I have his arm band from that brigade, his dog tags as well, but before that he was part of doing sabotage in Denmark against the Germans. So I’m very interested in all this and my wife’s dad knew this. Her dad knew from when they had a summer house in a village that was four hours from Budapest, but there was another village next to the one where they had their summer house in. They knew there was a story of a farmer that supposedly had killed an SS officer and when the Russians came to “Liberate” Hungary from the Germans, they just took over. A lot of Germans would try to get civilian clothes to try and get away, and this was one of them. Supposedly, he came into this farm and they say the farmer killed him and took his uniform. The guy died in the boots that I have in front of my fireplace, a pair of SS boots. Not because I’m a Nazi in any way or fashion, but because of the historical value of them. Inside you can see a stamp inside saying who developed those boots. I tried one on and I fit into it, the way it fits on you feels weird. It makes you feel superior in some way, it’s really strange. The way it hugs your calf and stuff like that, you put it on and you feel like you need to command someone around (laughing). It really does feel psychologically weird. I got those for Christmas because he had gone over there and bought them from this farmer and because of my historical interest in this. Then they were put in front of the fireplace. Sometime about 2 in the morning and we had snow that Christmas actually, there was this gigantic noise coming from the living room. It felt like everything that was up on the mantle over the fireplace was swept off and down on the floor in front. I was sure someone was in the house, so immediately I grabbed my gun and I started clearing the house. I saw my sister-in-law come out from her guest bedroom and told her to get back in her room and told my wife to get down behind the bed. When I saw Magic, our cat, she came out from our bathroom, it was like whoa, and it’s not her doing anything in there. I was pretty sure we had an uninvited guest and then I secured the house. I proceeded to turn lights on and thinking that if I turn this one on I’ll see whoever is there and I’ll make sure they don’t see me before its too late. There was nobody, no one in the house. Then I went up into the attic to see if there was anything up there that might’ve fallen over…nothing. I went out with a flashlight and walked around the house in the snow and there was no footprints, nothing, nothing, nothing. It was almost like OK, well Mr. Officer; I guess you are in the house now.
HS: Wow!
KD: That’s just one of these things. Poland for instance, we had four spots in this house. There are these ghost finder apps for fun things; they hit on all those four spots. One does exactly hit those four spots, it whacks out completely on those spots. We brought it with us on the tour here in Warsaw Poland; we stayed in a hotel way up on the high floors. You could see out over the whole city, it was beautiful, but the room was so freaking cold. It was unnaturally could not be that cold for real in the summertime, it simply could not be right. I asked them if they could bring heaters up and stuff like that. So I took that app out and it went nuts. There’s so much between heaven and earth that we will never understand, but it’s very fascinating. For me, I wish that someday I could be hosting some kind of a show to have other metal musicians come by and they scare the piss out of them to have a fun time. For Halloween, you could have a special broadcast where you broadcast from some haunted place. I can tell you I attract this stuff or vice versa. It would also be great to see some of our stories as actual movies. There are a couple of them that would really do well. It’s hard to do when you don’t know anyone in the business. There has to be someone with genuine interest to do justice to these things because B, C, and D movies I’m totally not interested in. There’s nothing I would ever allow to be done to these stories that doesn’t justify what they’re about. If someone comes in and they’re serious and they have the right capabilities to do it, then probably. Then you know that you have to compromise on story and things like that, that’s the way things are too you know. There are so many things; ‘Them’ and ‘Conspiracy’, there are different beginnings that were never mentioned on the album. There is only so much space on an album; I have so much stuff that happens in-between the two albums that make up the story. The ending, I know exactly how it would be for a movie that is not on the album. There are a lot of things; I have names for all the characters. A lot of stuff was put into it, just for me to understand it better, to have a better idea to make sure all the stuff was right. For ‘Abigail II’ for example, I had to create that family tree that’s inside the book just so I could make sure I didn’t make a mistake, that everybody was correct ages, correct this, correct that. That’s the thing when you do stories, you have to go over and over to make sure before you let go of it, it’s correct. I would love to see some of those stories like ‘Them’, ‘Conspiracy’, ‘The Puppet Master’, some of those would really do well. I mean even ‘Abigail’ would do fine.
HS: A lot of your material would be perfect as a horror film. Have you ever wanted to write a screenplay using your material?
KD: That’s the thing you know. It’s very hard to find time to sit down and write for me. But I would have an easier time collaborating with someone if that was the case. There’s been people who came to us, there was one in England recently, that came and said they had a script here and this and that. Well, King can’t read it because we don’t do anything until we have a business plan from you. We need to have something and then you need to sign a nondisclosure agreement because there’s always these traps, that’s why we have lawyers to prevent these traps where someone says “Now I showed them a script, so anything that’s going to come from now on, I can claim as based on mine.” It’s like no, no, I’ve never seen a script in my life so far. I would only read one if there have been all these contracts set up the correct way, and then I would of course, sit and figure it out. So there is always that stuff, the legal part. If someone comes from a real company and spells it out legally, then you could start collaborating. I could definitely collaborate on a lot of things, you take out a couple of days or a week or weekend or whatever and you talk the stories through in detail, what could be, what could not be. All my other ideas that I have about these stories that you can’t get on an album, it’s not like a book or anything like that. It’s just all the main points. I could collaborate with people easy if that was ever the case. You still hope for someday that it would come true because it would be very interesting I think. Grandma could be another Freddy Krueger if people did it right. You’ll never see your own grandmother the same way again if you had someone do that story correct you know.
HS: King, a lot of your videos are like mini horror movies. Are there any horror films that inspired you?
KD: There are a lot of horror movies that inspire me you could say. I’ll always go out of my way to try and not copy
anything in the stories, same with the music, I go out of my way to try and make sure that I do not copy anyone with anything. We have a very unique style and that’s part of the reason why we are doing better than we have ever done these days. We are still going stronger than ever on the theater road because we will never jump in on the fashion wagon. It was always us doing everything straight from the heart. That’s one thing that has created this solid base that is really growing at the moment. Fans that are so dedicated because they know they can trust us and they know how we are. For instance, a lot of albums are not out in Japan, simply because they want to have these special editions with bonus tracks and I refuse to milk the fans and be like that, I cannot be like that. They have to go and get that one extra song and buy the album one more time. That’s bullshit man; I can’t deal with that kind of stuff. That’s totally taking advantage of your own fans. They know that too about us and that’s why they are so hardcore, trustworthy fans.
Of course I’m inspired by a lot of these old movies you know, but also later on, there are movies that are not so much blood and gore. If there is a place in a movie where it has that, then do it and do it right so it is really effective. But movies that live on that, that’s not really my style. It’s more like the psychological horror that scares you inside, that makes you think afterwards. The thing with ‘The Puppet Master’ where evil totally wins in the end is an ending where it’s a horrible ending for this person that has been turned into a doll that’s hanging in a wall in a shop somewhere and will never ever see his love again, which has also been turned into a puppet but is in another place. Things are really not right at the end there and there is no hope for good to happen, that’s how it ends. It just leaves you with that, you will never forget it if you read the story through. You will never forget it because it has that impact of “man that was not right”, and sometimes that’s a good way to do things too. It will make people think and they will bring it up many times in the future. Of course, you are entranced by everything you see and hear. When I start writing music, the way I do it, I shut everything down. I don’t listen to other people’s music from the day I start writing until the day we’re done with the album. I do not listen to other stuff. It has to be me; it has to come from me, all of it. That’s how it has always been. There was one thing from the album ‘Them’, there is a song called “The Accusation Chair” that was so close to The Twilight Zone theme that someone came up to me and said they loved the way I incorporated the Twilight Zone theme in that song. I was like, not sure what you’re talking about. I never seen it, I grew up in Denmark, I don’t know what you’re talking about, I’m sorry. Then I checked it out and I was like “Oh my God!” I think there were two notes different, but the theme I used was slightly different. There are only so many notes and so many ways you can put them together. That was one of those where I hit something that I had no chance of having ever heard before. It was a very small thing, it didn’t make or break the song you know, and it was an interesting coincidence.
HS: To talk about your stage show a little bit, is it hard to weave your stage show around your music, to incorporate all that? Do your band members help collaborate on designing your stage show or is it just you?
KD: Well, it’s me, my wife helps a little bit, Andy was part of it, and our lighting engineer was part of it. It is collaboration of course but I had the majority of ideas because I wrote the lyrics and I have a certain thing that I would like for people to see, if it’s possible to see. That’s where we do different things, I have a lot of ideas for the lighting engineer and it’s up to him to carry them out. He carries a lot of them out perfectly. Some of it he comes up with new ideas. People are on the same level to a degree you know, but of course it has to come from me, these things because I wrote the lyrics and I know what things I would like to see. Those lighting effects, they work and the way he moves certain shadows around by lighting things in the front and the back, front and the back. I work on a lot of those things with him, this year we were in Germany and worked for a whole week with full production, full lights, it could’ve been a concert, the whole week but there was nobody there but us. Working and perfecting the whole thing, getting it right, getting the lights right. After the first show, I sit and look at pictures and videos afterwards and we had to drop the hollow spot because I saw things, working with the actress on the song “Voodoo” where she is a voodoo priestess. I’m standing with a follow spot on me and she stands without a follow spot on me and this poison green color and I looked whiter and it didn’t look like we were in the same room. It didn’t fit the mood, the mood is much more important than seeing me in a follow spot which I don’t care about. It’s the whole presentation that matters to me, it’s the theater, it’s not me me me, it has nothing to do with that. It’s a process that a lot of people work on. I hope that next year we can bring back the coffin for cremation and burn me on stage again. That’s one thing, my back can do it, and I know how it’s done, the trick, so I know I can do it. It just has to be overhauled and fixed up. There’s things that are not tight enough and that has to be fixed and repaired so that it’s totally safe again. I’d love to bring that back plus some other effects that we’re going to have that I won’t talk about yet. If that happens and we can add that to the show, it’s going to be a jaw dropper totally. It’s already really very effective. People don’t bring what we bring and we make sure we can actually adjust it a little bit so we can fit it in the bigger indoor places with stages for theaters. In the U.S. it should fit next time. It fills out the festival stages in Europe. It’s not just that we bring in a backdrop you know and a bunch of amps. You don’t even see the amps on our set. It looks like the end of a church; it’s a two stories, stairs leading up, candelabras, big crosses that can light up sitting upside down up in the balcony. All kinds of stuff, Grandma’s in there in the wheelchair and you interact with her. There’s a voodoo priestess and a pregnant wife, black horsemen and all this stuff. She’s been with us since the ‘Voodoo’ album so she’s been there for 13 or 14 years. She’s the puppet in the Puppet Master, it’s amazing what she adds to it, but it’s her and I and we have ideas on how to do it. It’s really up where it has not been before. The way it looks is extremely impressive I can tell you. It’s the size of Iron Maiden’s show.
HS: I agree. Your stage show is so impressive; it’s almost like going to a haunted house.
KD: Yeah, you’re right. It seems like when people take pictures of it, it’s haunted for real.
HS: King, if you had a dream project, what do you think that might be?
KD: A dream project? Man, one of the movies, if that were ever to happen in the right hands. Someone who was really serious and had the power to do it right. That has been a dream my whole career, to see one of those come to life for real, that would be like “Wow”. I’d even go out and write some new songs for it, brand new material. There’s a lot of stuff that would be extremely interesting to see because that’s a level I’ve never been at. It’s a thing that I’m not expecting will happen so if it ever happens, it will be an amazing bonus. It hasn’t happened all these years so why would it suddenly happen now? For us as a band, I’d like to see us go up up up you know. From here on, it’s not like people want to see us because we came back from whatever happened to me, it’s amazing what has happened and that I can go on and be better than I have ever been in my career. The band sounds better; everything is where it should be. We get invited to headline all these big things and we spent the whole summer over in Europe. Next year for Wacken, that was the first one that was announced, there will be a bunch more for Europe next year and then the U.S. should be in the Autumn next year. Whether there is a new album out or not, we will do our best, we will be writing and It’s a matter of whether it’s going to be done or not. We are not going to rush; it’s just going to be right. Once we get up and running with this new system that I’ve told you about, it’s also going to make us more productive because we will have everything at our fingertips.
HS: What about a long awaited DVD or Blu-ray? Any plans for that?
KD: We might have that from Japan. We will play over there on the 20th of October. We have as part of the deal; we have to give them as headliner 5 songs for a TV special that they are going to produce. That means they are shooting the whole thing with 10 cameras. Copies of all the 10 camera footage in case there is something we don’t like in their edit then we can go in and replace it with another camera because we have them all. Once we have that, we might as well do the whole concert and then take 5 of the best for their TV special but then we sit with the rest and what do we do with it? Once they’ve used it for the TV, we can use it for advertisement and then maybe do a special Japanese release of all the DVD/CD live set. It would be perfect to shoot it and then have it.
Without saying anything specific, there’s a chance, we have bought the rights to record it anyway. We have to give them something, so why not do the whole thing. Then, that could be our way to get our foot into the Japanese market where we’ve never really been doing anything. They love horror over there you know. It will come natural once they see our show.
HS: Are you excited to be a part of Metal Blade Records now?
KD: Absolutely! From what I understand, they are doing very well. We have a very good deal with them and look very much forward to the next three albums that we signed on for. We have a great relationship.
HS: Will we ever see Mercyful Fate reunited again in the near future?
KD: There are no immediate plans but that’s the question a lot of people will be asking. The answer is the same, I would never say no to that. That’s always a possibility, you never know. These days if you want to do it, it has to be done right. It demands a lot and that means someone has to have money to do it. That’s the one thing these days, if you want to do something, you have to do it right. I know now from King Diamond from being away from the scene for a little while and then catching up, with the internet and the fan club and everything you have to do, work on sponsorship, work on all kinds of stuff to get it up and get off to the right level. Where we are now with King Diamond, it’s much better than we’ve ever been but it’s a lot of work to get it up to there. When you think about it, it’s the same lineup in King Diamond we’ve had for 10 or 12 years now, which is great too. It definitely makes everybody tight. With Mercyful Fate also who is in Mercyful Fate right now? I don’t know. If anyone wanted Mercyful Fate again in some way, are we talking the old Mercy? No one has gathered the old old lineup with Kim Ruzz you know. Simply because no one knew what his skill was at, if he could play or whatever. It’s all these things once you start talking about that stuff, you hope people’s egos are not getting in the way of making things happen, if somebody wanted to try and make it happen. You never know, you never know what can happen. It would really have to be done right. An interesting concept would be to have the really old lineup and go and play only from the early stuff, ‘Melissa’ and ‘Don’t Break the Oath’, and do only that, and show people that these guys can still kick some serious ass! All these people have families and work; they can’t go out on a big tour, that’s a fact. Then you would have to play selective shows here and there. To do it correctly, imagine all the time it would take to get it up and running. A lot of work, a lot of people’s wages to be paid, that’s what I’m getting at. Someone has to have a lot of money to make that happen because people’s situations right now. I wouldn’t mind doing it, not at all, it would be very interesting.
HS: That would be awesome, I’m sure the fans would go nuts over that.
KD: With Mercy, they have never done bigger stuff than King Diamond and we are still going up. We always sold more, we’ve played bigger places, we got more this and that, and it’s always been the case. King Diamond is the one where it started with all the conceptual albums and horror and that respect. King Diamond was always ten times more satanic actually. People say no Mercy, but no no, King Diamond has all the satanic philosophies there. It’s very very full of the supernatural, Mercy has more of the myths you know, pointing fingers a little here and there. Talk about Headless riders, those different kinds of myths there. I always carry a letter from Anton Lavey with me on tour. I have a hand written letter from him that his own daughter didn’t believe I had because he never wrote anyone by hand, it was always dictated. I had the pleasure of meeting him and spending a night at the church out in San Francisco. He gave me eternal membership and the things he wrote in the letter, most people would not understand what it’s about and I’m not going to tell them. There are other things in the letter that are very special; I will always have it with me. I see King Diamond as much more if you want to say Satanic than Mercyful Fate ever was. That’s why with King Diamond now we have upside down crosses and we have the gigantic Baphomet symbol so it almost looks like a church inside. Mercy had so much originality in it. It has a different value then King Diamond has you know, they’re two very different things. That’s why there’s room for both. King Diamond is extremely theatrical and Mercy is more straight forward because it’s complex. We still play a couple songs in the King Diamond set; we play “Come To the Sabbath” and “Evil”.
HS: That’s incredible. King, I could talk to you all day, I’m sure but I don’t want to hold you up. You’re a true legend in the music industry and I’ve been listening to you for 30 years. It’s a total honor to speak with you and I thank you so much for taking time out to talk with me. I wish you the best of luck with your health and your career. I can’t wait for new stuff from you guys.
KD: We can’t wait to get moving on new material and do more of this. Not just me, but the whole band got a second life now. We have to get our ass to Chicago too, but that’s one of our strongholds, I’m sure we’ll be there soon.
HS: I’ll be there when you come back.
KD: It was great talking to you too.
Watch Mercyful Fate’s ‘Witches Dance’ video here:
Watch Mercyful Fate’s ‘Uninvited Guest’ video here:
For more information,
Official King Diamond Website: https://www.kingdiamondcoven.com/site/
Official Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kingdiamondmercyfulfateofficial
Official Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kingdiamondofficial
Official Twitter: https://twitter.com/realkingdiamond
Awesome interview….been a fan since 1984 and looking forward to some new stuff and u.s shows.
I love their music and their standpoints …. ha ha ha