Voodoo

This is the eighth of the studio albums the band lists on its official site. It was recorded and mastered at Nomad Recording Studio in Texas, with additional recording at Los Angered Recording in Gothenburg, Sweden. King Diamond, guitarist Andy La Rocque and Sterling Winfield produced it. Winfield was also the engineer, with Kol Marshall as second engineer; King Diamond and Winfield mixed the record, and King Diamond himself did the mastering. The line-up was King Diamond on vocals and keyboards, Andy La Rocque and Herb Simonsen on guitars, Chris Estes on bass and John Luke Hebert on drums. Estes also played acoustic guitar and keyboards and is credited as mix assistant. Dimebag Darrell of Pantera plays a guitar solo on the title track, and in a 2007 interview King Diamond said he was glad Dimebag had been part of the record. By the next album, House of God, Glen Drover and Dave Harbour had taken over guitar and bass from Simonsen and Estes. The story is set in 1932 in an old colonial mansion north of Baton Rouge, beside the Mississippi. Its first owner, a voodoo priest, lies in the voodoo cemetery on the estate. When the Lafayettes move in (Sarah, who is expecting a child, her husband David and a blind grandfather) and decide to destroy the cemetery, the estate's servant Salem and the voodoo sorcerer Doctor Le Croix move against them, and in the end an exorcist, Father Malone, is called to Sarah. Massacre Records released the album in Europe in February 1998 as a CD, a digipak and a picture-disc LP, and Metal Blade Records issued it on CD in North America. It reached number 27 on the official Finnish chart and spent four weeks there. In 2009 La Rocque remastered the album for a reissue that adds a live version of "Voodoo".