The years he has spent living in America have softened his Danish accent. “Right now things are good for me,” he says. When he speaks to Classic Rock at his home in Texas he is in buoyant mood. This summer, in addition to making some high-profile European festival appearances, King Diamond plays a one-off UK gig at the Forum in London where he will be performing his landmark 1987 album Abigail. For long periods his brand of music was out of sync with the changing times, but through it all he has retained a loyal cult following and has continued to tour and make albums both with his own band and in a number of reunions with Mercyful Fate. Later came rumours that he was going to be sued by Kiss for infringement of their image rights. In 1984, in an interview with Kerrang!, he was branded a hokey Satanist, a fraud. Over the years there have been hard times for King Diamond. The band’s style of complex, heavy riffing was an inspiration to James Hetfield, who has stated that “Mercyful Fate was a huge influence on Metallica”. And in Mercyful Fate’s music there was a depth and power that went far beyond the primitive bludgeoning of Venom and early Slayer. He was a scholar in the dark arts, and a member of the Church Of Satan, the organisation led by Anton Szandor LaVey, author of The Satanic Bible. King Diamond was entirely serious about this stuff. And yet there was something that set him and Mercyful Fate apart from bands such as Venom and Slayer, who posed as Satanists purely for shock value. With his masked face and satanic songs rendered in that mock-operatic shriek, he was frequently ridiculed in the music press. King Diamond appeared as much a caricature as any of them. There was Venom, the original, devil-worshipping black metal band Manowar, muscle-bound warriors from New York declaring ‘Death to false metal’ Thor, a former bodybuilding champion from Canada, whose stage act included breaking concrete blocks on his chest. Not only a survivor of more than 30 years in the music business, but also a survivor of multiple heart attacks that almost killed him six years ago.Īt the time when Mercyful Fate rose to prominence in the mid-80s there were many heavy metal acts with an over-the-top image. What is certain is that he is a survivor. To others he’s no more than a clown, a Halloween bogeyman with a singing voice like Rob Halford being boiled alive. To some he’s a cult hero, a master of theatrical heavy metal, innovative and influential. In his long career, both with Mercyful Fate and as leader of the band in his own name, King Diamond has remained a divisive figure. But what is about to happens on this night at King’s place scares the shit out of Hansen and his girlfriend.
This occult shtick is of no interest to Hetfield and Ulrich, they just like the guy and love his band. His obsession with the dark arts is expressed in Mercyful Fate’s songs and in his theatrical image: his face painted white and black, like Kiss, but with an inverted cross between his eyes. In one corner of the room is an altar: a table draped in a black cloth, lit by tall candles and decorated with a figurine of the pagan idol Baphomet and occult books The Satanic Bible and The Necronomicon, the centerpiece a human skull. For hours they’ve been sitting in the living room, talking and soaking up the heavy vibes from old records by Deep Purple, Black Sabbath and Blue Öyster Cult. It’s been a long night, and all of them are drunk.
King Diamond, the singer with Danish heavy metal band Mercyful Fate, is entertaining four guests: Timi Hansen, the band’s bassist, and his girlfriend, and Metallica’s Lars Ulrich and James Hetfield, who are in Copenhagen to record their group’s second album, Ride The Lightning.
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