King Diamond interviewed by Michael Juvinall – Horror Society
Kim Petersen for those uninitiated is a Grammy nominated singer known by his stage name King Diamond. He fronts the black metal bands Merciful Fate and the titular King Diamond. King is an iconic figure known for his high vocal range and dark, satanic persona. On stage King is also known for his various black and white satanic face paint designs.
King has been in rock/metal bands since the mid-seventies, but it wasn’t until 1980 that he formed the historic metal band Mercyful Fate. In the mid-eighties, King Diamond split with the band to work on his solo career. He then formed the self-titled group King Diamond and has been recording and touring with the band ever since. King has also gone back to Mercyful Fate several times since to record five more albums. King himself has said that Mercyful Fate is not broken up, only dormant at the time and hopefully will one day get back together again.
In 2010 it was announced that King had suffered heart failure and had to undergo triple-bypass heart surgery due to years of excessive smoking. After two years of convalescence, King returned to the stage and has performed shows and festivals in Europe for the past two years. This fall, King Diamond underwent his first United States tour in several years.
I recently had the opportunity to speak with King Diamond for a second time, a man who I have had the utmost respect for ever since Mercyful Fate’s debut album Don’t Break The Oath was released in 1984. Join us as King speaks on the recent US tour highlights, what his thoughts on Halloween and Christmas are and what happened with the abrupt cancellation of the King Diamond concert at Japan’s Loud Park Festival, which would’ve marked King Diamond’s first-ever Japanese show.
You can listen to the entire interview via the video below or read the edited version as well.
Horror Society: To start things off, I want to say it’s great to speak with you again. You just finished up a successful US tour and many of the dates were sold out. It seems like fans in the US have been waiting for you to come back with open arms.
King Diamond: It was very nice, absolutely. It’s been going very well. The band is tighter than ever and my voice is better than ever. Something good came out of being sick. I had to change my lifestyle and stop smoking. I didn’t know how big of an effect it had on my voice to be smoking. It’s actually easier for me now to do all the hard vocals than it has ever been. That’s a big plus. If you’ve never seen King Diamond, this is the time to see us because it has never looked better; we never had a better production or better put together show. We have a very good crew as well that is very much instrumental in this production being able to go up every day and night and work so we don’t have to worry. We played Wacken earlier this year in Europe in front of 92,000 people. It was an amazing experience as well. It was that very same production we were able to cram into theaters over here. Every theater over here had been meticulously measured so we knew that we could just squeeze it in.
HS: That’s awesome! It’s just not a King Diamond show without the full stage setup.
KD: No it’s not, absolutely not. For me, it’s not that the production will ever come first before the music, but it has to go hand in hand and it always did for us. I guess something good came out of that bad experience I had with my open heart surgery. When we tried again, we did two shows in 2012, Sweden Rock Festival and Hellfest in Europe. We spent every dime on production because we didn’t know if it would be our last two shows. It wasn’t until the rehearsals I found out that I could do it.
HS: Since your surgery a few years ago, you’ve done a handful of European shows and festivals. How did it feel to go out and do a complete US tour? Did it feel good for you?
KD: We did 13 shows last year in Europe but they were spread out more. For this tour we had up to four shows back to back and it was never a problem, never, not even a hint. That’s amazing in itself. In the old days, that would not have gone well – to do four shows back to back at an hour and a half plus. Again, that all goes back to the no smoking for the voice; it’s given it a new life. It’s never been better than it is right now. Normally, at this point of one’s career, if you sing that style of vocals, your voice starts fading, that’s the nature. My voice is better than it ever was. If you see the show now, you’ll see that I’m enjoying it more too. It’s a good set list we have now. We already have several songs that can be keyed up for the future. It was a very, very good tour and hopefully it will be the beginning for a lot more. We have three albums to do on our contract with Metal Blade you know.
My home studio is finished now, my vocal studio, so I can do all vocals here. I have top notch recording here at home. The vocal booth was built by three friends of mine but from all pro stuff. I didn’t know music could sound like this. We used it in getting the right sound out of the “Best Of” that just came out. It made it possible to go in and actively go back and enhance albums that were before they were remastered by Roadrunner and Metal Blade. All the songs that are on the “Best Of” have been enhanced. That was one thing that was very important and you can really hear it with the Roadrunner things. If you have an Abigail album, pick that and then play those songs, and then play them on the “Best Of”, they are the best versions of those songs that are out there. It was only possible with the new gear we have gotten. Hopefully that will come in very; very handy for the future with all the stuff we do then. I wish we could redo all the albums with those sounds, throw out the manufacturing masters they are using now and then put new ones with these new settings because they would sound much better and much closer to the original.
HS: That would be awesome. The best of album Dreams of Horror sounds incredible. I wanted to ask you, was it difficult to choose which songs you wanted to put on the album?
KD: Oh yeah. What was on it was pretty much the songs that we have played live and a few maybe that if we don’t play them live, we probably will soon. There are so many songs to choose from, it was very hard to choose. For instance, “Halloween” is not on there.
HS: That’s one of my favorites and I was going to ask you about that one.
KD: “Halloween” used to be a very hard song on the vocal chords to sing. With all of those extreme highs, it had a tendency to wear my voice down. I haven’t sung it for a long time, but now with the way my voice is, it was a piece of cake. It was absolutely so easy and it was not wearing on my vocal chords whatsoever.
HS: Speaking of Halloween, you played in Los Angeles on Halloween. I know your stage show is always very large and involved. Was your stage show any different for Halloween and what does Halloween mean to you personally?
KD: There was no change in the stage show for that night. It’s almost like the song itself says, “Every night to me is Halloween”, and it was no different of course. The only difference in the set was we added the song “Halloween”, we had to play that of course, but otherwise it’s the same.
HS: How do you celebrate Halloween?
KD: I don’t celebrate Halloween. If I’m not on tour, I don’t. No kids come to our house, maybe they know who’s here (laughing).
HS: I would think your house would be the number one house to visit on Halloween.
KD: Well, if they were to come inside they might enjoy it. From outside, it is nothing, no decorations or anything. I actually have a Christmas tree in here, a small one; it’s sitting up over the fireplace. It has little ornaments and tiny little candles; it actually gives a cozy light from it. It’s always there, I never take it down. I don’t want to bother with it and it looks fine there. My parents always made a lot out of that, it’s not a religious thing for me whatsoever. I am not religious, I never was. It’s a cozy time I think, some great memories from when I was kid. So I have a Christmas tree that is always out, I never put it away.
HS: That’s pretty cool. Last time I spoke with you King, you were planning the Loud Park show in Japan. It would’ve been the first time you ever played in Japan and the concert suddenly got cancelled. What really happened with that?
KD: I would like to know the last part of it that I’ve never been told. Whatever made the container ship late into the Chinese harbor? I’ve never gotten an explanation for that. I have my suspicions on what happened but I cannot prove it. The ship left Hamburg, it was trucked from Copenhagen to Hamburg and then it went on a Chinese ship going to a harbor in China. It was going to go in there and then go onto a Japanese ship and then go from there to Tokyo. It was supposed to be there six or seven days before the show. On the way somebody found out the ship was delayed or late by six days. The shippers were called and asked what the hell happened. They said no, it’s not late. They found out it was late. What happened then, it got late into the Chinese harbor and there was no way it could make it in time. There was one way it could’ve made it in time to Japan and we made a deal with the Japanese promoter to fly it in, then it would be able to make it of the day of the show. It would’ve cost a lot of money and we were going to do that to make it happen but the Chinese would not allow it to enter their country. It sat there for two or three weeks before the container was put on a ship out from the Chinese harbor back to Copenhagen. I have a feeling they went in and picked up some cargo that they shouldn’t have picked up to make extra money instead of ours.
HS: That’s really too bad. When we spoke last time you mentioned you were planning on recording a live show at that concert.
KD: Yeah, it was all set up, we were all in agreement.
HS: The fans would love to see a live King Diamond concert DVD.
KD: I know, I would too, but they cost money to do. We could’ve filmed the Wacken show but when you find out what it costs, it’s too much. It becomes costly very quickly. It’s up to the record label to do it. It’s up to them if they find it feasible and these days with all the phones that are everywhere filming your stuff, these are the problems with bootlegging that a record label has to be aware of. They can’t just do it, spend all the money and get nothing back. It has to be profitable for them to do it. With the way it is these days, you release something and a couple days after, you can find it elsewhere. It’s not our decision to make. We would fucking love to do a DVD, it’s not just ten years overdue, it’s a career overdue. We’ve never done one.
HS: We’re almost out of time; I have one last question for you. How soon are we going to be seeing any new material from you?
KD: When we’re done, (laughing). It’s got to be right. Now we have all the tools in our hands with the studio right here. I’m going to take as much time as I want to get it right. I need to get my hands on this new system to learn it perfectly. I’ve been rehearsing for the tour in it. Andy (LaRocque) was here and will be back in January when we have a meeting to run some things together with me. When that process is moving on, you start writing. I have lots of ideas for story stuff. There’s no lack of material. It’s not going to get rushed in any way. If a riff is not that great to sing to, I’ll change it to where it’s good to sing to.
HS: Thank you for taking time out to speak with me. I look forward to new material from the band. Your best of Dreams of Horror is out now on Metal Blade. Good luck with your health and the band; it was great speaking with you again.
KD: You too. I sound a little distraught at the moment, I think because I just got out of a meeting with an insurance agent for three hours and I just stepped in when you called. I knew I had a one o’clock and I hauled ass back home. I’m still walking around in shoes and everything. It was nice talking to you too man! You take care.
