The Best King Diamond Album

The best King Diamond album is obviously Conspiracy.

KD’s vox on this one are really out of sight. It’s like if you took the best of Rob Halford and Dave Mustaine and Ihsahn and mixed them up, you’d get the vocals on this one. King, as he often does on his albums, narrates and does different voices in the story. So he’s all over the place. The falsetto harmonies are absolutely gorgeous on this one, and are executed so flawlessly they weave a smooth, thick fabric of sound. Some of his screams really fucking blow you away and to top it off, the composition is top-notch all the way through the album. Every King album has its moments, but this one just never stops. Every time it starts playing, I think I’m going to turn it off but I just can’t. Every song is too good — the pacing and thematic delivery is too well thought-out, the choruses are too catchy, the verses too progressive, the solos…my good-guillotine – the. so. lo. s!

Andy LaRoque and Pete Blakk play some mean metal guitar on this one. No, they play some sinister guitar. Actually, you know what? Let’s just be retarded and call it some smokin’ guitar, okay? For those of you still reading, Andy LaRoque and the range of other lead guitar players that have accompanied him on KD albums always know how to make their playing beautiful, haunting and sort of… desperate sounding. Their playing is just, frenetic, caustic, but amazingly precise somehow, kind of like on Racer X, Cacophony or Judas Priest’s better moments (Do you get it? I like Turbo).

The composition is probably the tightest it’s ever been on his albums, the most inspired. This album is a highlight in the history of heavy metal and rock ‘n roll. King Diamond seems to lay just below the mainstream radar (which is fine) due to his satanic affiliations, his horror motifs, his constant flow of concept albums and the persistent falsetto howls, which some people seem to hate (who are you people?!) or take to be utterly hilarious. I’ll admit I thought it was funny when I first heard it, and while he does a lot of stuff tongue-in-cheek, he manages to win everyone over with his charming persona and sense of humor. Some of the lines in his albums are fucking classic, and not to mention some of his music videos. Like…in “The Family Ghost”, the way Andy is wearing the Yngwie uniform and playing his guitar and acting all nancy-boy. Oh shit, that is top-notch. Or how about when KD is floating around the room in the video to “Welcome Home”? Or the dopey, vanilla kid who plays him? You gotta see the Beavis & Butthead episodes about him.

Concept-wise, Conspiracy is the proper sequel to the previous album, Them. Them begins with King’s Grandmother coming home from the sanitarium to stay with the family again. She was hospitalized for being crazy, but it turns out she’s long been possessed by “them”, the sinister beings who live in the attic. King and his sister are kids in this story. It all sounds funny enough when you listen to the album and can only pick out the emphasized parts (”Grand-maaaaaa, welcome ho-ome!”, “It is time for tea…”) so people think it’s a joke, but the story is pretty freaky if you go and read the lyrics. However, there are some hilarious things, like on the Roadrunner remastered CD release, there’s the extra track, “The Phone Call” which is between King and his Grandma. Jolly good fun!

I don’t want to spoil the story of Them or the sequel, but Conspiracy begins with King as an adult, getting out of the sanitarium himself and trying to make sense of what happened all those years ago. He revisits the house and has to come to terms with his actions and finds that “they” are still there. This story also involves a doctor. I think King knows what’s up (in real life).

Here’s “Welcome Home” from Them. This is the song they used in the movie Clerks 2 (or so I’ve heard). The lead guitar work on King Diamond albums is some of the best found in metal, really.

Here’s the single from the Conspiracy album, “Sleepless Nights”. Notice that it’s cut down by like a minute or so. They cut out half of the solo as well as the ambiance at the end. I don’t like this video that much, but the way they’re hanging out in the misty fenced in graveyard is pretty goofy.

This is metal/rock history. One of the best and most unique (set of) albums around.

Some fun facts:

+ There was an official promo comic-book made of Conspiracy using King’s lyrics to the story in the dialogue and narration. Particularly vivid is the scene where King is in the doctor’s office and he offers up gems like “I should’ve taken the stethoscope and shoved it down his throat!”. Although I saw the comic once when I was a kid, unfortunately I have not come across it anywhere again – not on the internet nor anywhere else, nor have any other fans seem to have heard of it. If anyone’s seen it, drop a line.

+ King Diamond was actually sued by KISS when Conspiracy came out, for purportedly ripping off their make-up. My friend remarked that had King had to testify in court, he should’ve been like “I quote from my latest album when I say: Con-spir-acy, con-spir-acy. I am being vic-tim-ized.”

+ The first KD album I bought was Abigail and I bought it at the Virgin Records megastore in downtown New Orleans back in 1999 or thereabouts. I remember reading the lyrics about Abigail eating her way out of the… well, and being totally horrified. Although it might have been because I was in New Orleans, which is haunted, dirty and downright disturbing. Too bad I didn’t get Voodoo, now that I think about it. That’s probably exactly where King wanted people to buy it (it takes place in Louisiana, guys).

+ You know, I actually brought the previous album, Them, into my music theory class in high school to play during the class (our teacher let everyone do this once a semester). My teacher was very vocal about how much he thought it sucked (which he never did with anything/anyone else) and actually kicked me out of the class soon after. Conspiracy?

~ by chaosrexmachinae on November 25, 2007.