The Eye

The Eye is the band's fifth studio album and the last of the five it made for Roadrunner Records. It was recorded and mixed at Sweet Silence Studios. King Diamond produced it with guitarist Andy La Rocque and Roberto Falcao; King Diamond and Falcao mixed it, and Falcao and Flemming Hansson engineered it. As on Conspiracy, Thomas Holm is among those credited for the cover artwork. Snowy Shaw is now on drums, alongside La Rocque and Pete Blakk on guitars and Hal Patino on bass, and the keyboards are played by King Diamond himself and by Falcao. King Diamond wrote all the lyrics and most of the music: La Rocque wrote "The Meetings", "Insanity" and "1642 Imprisonment", Blakk wrote "Father Picard", and La Rocque and Shaw wrote "Into the Convent" together. Like the albums before it, it tells a single story, but from another angle: its protagonist is not a character voiced by King Diamond but a cursed artefact and an array of people connected with it. The subject is cruelty committed in the name of the Christian god, falling hardest on nuns, and the main events are drawn from the time of the French Inquisition, with real people of the period among the characters; song titles such as "The Trial (Chambre Ardente)", "Into the Convent", "Father Picard" and "1642 Imprisonment" mark its stages. Roadrunner released the album in October 1990, through Roadracer Records in the United States, where it entered the Billboard 200 on 15 December and peaked at No. 179 on 19 January 1991. By King Diamond's own account, the band then bought its way out of the Roadrunner contract by handing over a 1987 live recording of Abigail and Mercyful Fate's Return of the Vampire.