KING DIAMOND TRIVIA
Trivia
Halloween, a three-track picture-disc LP from 1986, takes the title song and the opening track, "The Candle", from the debut album Fatal Portrait and adds "The Lake", recorded in the same period but left off the nine-track album. King Diamond said in 1986 that "The Lake" would not appear on any album and was meant for the B-side of the next single; the band's discography lists it, with "No Presents for Christmas", as a bonus track of Fatal Portrait. Halloween was produced by King Diamond and Rune Höyer, with Michael Denner assisting and Roberto Falcao engineering. Metal Blade Records has announced a worldwide reissue with new artwork by Mario Lopez, with a release date of 23 October 2026.
The two members who had come over from Mercyful Fate did not stay long. The band's member list gives guitarist Michael Denner's and bassist Timi Hansen's time as running from the "No Presents for Christmas" single to Abigail. Denner's successor, Mike Moon, joined during the Abigail tour, and the only record he plays on is the live album In Concert 1987: Abigail. Pete Blakk then took over from Moon and stayed from Them to The Eye, while the bass passed to Hal Patino. According to Decibel, Hansen left on good terms and taught Patino the songs of the live set before he went.
Mikkey Dee left after Them but was brought back for the studio recording of Conspiracy in 1989: the band's member list says so, and the album's credits name him on drums. On the road the drummer was Snowy Shaw, who stayed from the Conspiracy tour to The Eye, recorded at Sweet Silence Studios in Copenhagen between June and August 1990 with Shaw credited on drums. By 2002 Dee was the drummer of Motörhead.
Five King Diamond albums have entered the Billboard 200. The highest was Them, which peaked at No. 89 in August 1988 and spent twelve weeks on the chart. Abigail reached No. 123 in 1987 with thirteen weeks, and Conspiracy No. 111 in 1989 with eight. The Eye entered in December 1990 and peaked at No. 179 in January 1991, also with eight weeks. Give Me Your Soul...Please entered at No. 174 in July 2007 for a single week; Blabbermouth put its first-week sales in the United States at 4,500 copies.
Five years went by between The Eye in 1990 and The Spider's Lullabye in 1995 without a new album. According to the band's member list, a line-up that included guitarist Mike Wead existed in between and was supposed to record The Spider's Lullabye. The album was made instead by King Diamond and Andy La Rocque with three newcomers who had all played in a band called Mindstorm: guitarist Herb Simonsen, bassist Chris Estes and drummer Darrin Anthony. It was recorded and mixed at The Dallas Sound Lab in September and October 1994. Wead also stood in for Michael Denner on Mercyful Fate's European tour for Into the Unknown, and became an official member of the band King Diamond on the European tour for House of God.
The band's recording base moved from Copenhagen to Texas in the 1990s. Its discography places Fatal Portrait at Sound Track Studio in 1985, Them and Conspiracy at M.M.C. Studio and The Eye at Sweet Silence Studios in 1990, all in Copenhagen, and Andy La Rocque remembers Abigail being started there in December 1986, in a bitterly cold winter, with about two months spent on recording and mixing. After the return, The Spider's Lullabye (September and October 1994) and The Graveyard (March to May 1996) were made at The Dallas Sound Lab, and Voodoo and House of God at Nomad Recording Studio in Carrollton, Texas, where King Diamond also mastered Voodoo himself. The Swedish link remained: La Rocque recorded the keyboards for "Whispers" on The Graveyard at Los Angered Recording in Gothenburg, and Voodoo and House of God both had additional recordings made there.
At the end of the 1990s the line-up changed with almost every tour. According to the band's member list, drummer Darrin Anthony left after a car accident following the recording of The Graveyard, and John Luke Hebert played from that album's European tour. Glen Drover, who later also played in Megadeth, replaced Herb Simonsen on guitar during the Voodoo tour. Around House of God the bass passed from Chris Estes to Dave Harbour and then to Hal Patino, and on that album's European tour Mike Wead took Drover's place and Matt Thompson took Hebert's. Wead and Thompson stayed on, and both play on the 2024 single "Spider Lilly".
"Never Ending Hill", the second song on Give Me Your Soul...Please, was nominated for Best Metal Performance at the 50th Grammy Awards in 2008. The Recording Academy's site lists the nomination not only on its King Diamond artist page but also on the individual pages of guitarist Mike Wead and drummer Matt Thompson. The album was recorded by King Diamond, Andy La Rocque, Mike Wead, Hal Patino and Matt Thompson, with additional vocals by Livia Zita. King Diamond himself was a nominee in the same category again at the 56th awards in 2014, for Volbeat's "Room 24".
In 2012 the band returned to the stage for a limited number of shows, including the Hellfest festival in France and Sweden Rock in Sweden. The band's own biography from the time says the festival crowds saw the largest and most elaborate stage production in its history, with a set that drew on the horror concepts of several albums.
The band's records were long split between two catalogues, Roadrunner Records' and Metal Blade Records'. The compilation Dreams of Horror, released in November 2014, drew 23 songs chosen by the band from both, mastered afresh by King Diamond and Andy La Rocque. On 30 March 2020 Metal Blade announced CD and LP reissues of Abigail and Fatal Portrait for 24 April, quoting King Diamond: these were not remasters but the albums as first released, taken from the original production masters with their original dynamics. In a video that April he explained that Metal Blade had acquired all the old King Diamond and Mercyful Fate catalogues from Warner, and that he had pushed for the old sound, finding the earlier gold remasters squashed by compression and limiting. Conspiracy, Them, The Eye and In Concert 1987 were announced to follow.
Abigail has also become a graphic novel. Z2 Comics announced it in April 2021 as the first comic ever written by King Diamond himself, made with writer Dan Watters and artist Damien Worm; King Diamond called seeing one of his stories turned into a graphic novel a dream come true. The deluxe packages included an Abigail picture disc whose front shows the graphic novel's cover and whose back carries both the original Abigail sleeve and an alternative cover painting by Torbjörn Jörgensen. Z2's shop lists the book in hardcover and softcover editions.
In autumn 2025 King Diamond himself was one of five artists chosen for the Danish Arts Foundation's lifelong honorary grant; the Foundation's list of recipients gives him as Kim Bendix Petersen (King Diamond). The grant honours Danish artists who create, and have created, art of the highest quality; it is awarded by the Foundation's board of representatives on the recommendation of the relevant grant committee and is held by 275 artists in all. The citation, as BraveWords reported it, named his work as the frontman of Mercyful Fate alongside his own band, also called King Diamond.
Besides the five members of the band, The Puppet Master (2003) features Livia Zita on additional vocals, as does Give Me Your Soul...Please in 2007. According to the band's discography, The Puppet Master came with a DVD on which King Diamond himself tells the album's story. It was recorded in four places, Los Angered Recording in Gothenburg, Nomad Recording Studio in Dallas, Solna Sound Recording in Sweden and King's House in Texas, and mixed at King's House by King Diamond, Andy La Rocque and J.T. Longoria.
King Diamond himself has given the date he left Mercyful Fate. Speaking to Metal Forces in 1986, he said he quit on 11 April 1985, the day after the band had played the Saga in Copenhagen, and phoned the others to tell them. The main reason, as he put it, was musical: guitarist Hank Shermann wanted more pop-oriented, commercial songs on the next Mercyful Fate album, and King Diamond would not have it. The new band took two members from the old one, guitarist Michael Denner and bassist Timi Hansen, and added two newcomers, guitarist Andy La Rocque and drummer Mikkey Dee. Its first gig was at the Saga as well. King Diamond said they played it to see what they were like together on a stage before going on tour, and were alarmed when they heard how many magazines were coming.
There was a contract behind the new name. Asked by Metal Forces in 1986 why a band with almost the same members had started again under a different name, King Diamond said the Mercyful Fate deal had been only average, and that changing the name let them reopen negotiations with Roadrunner Records; the percentages and the advances both went up. Hank Shermann, for his part, had wanted to keep the full Mercyful Fate name for his own new band. King Diamond and the others refused, since people would take it for the old group, and Shermann's band went out as Fate instead. King Diamond added that the new band would still play Mercyful Fate songs he had written himself, such as "The Oath", "Gypsy", "Come to the Sabbath" and "Evil".
The band's first record was a Christmas single, "No Presents for Christmas", released in December 1985. King Diamond explained in 1986 how it came about: playing guitar one day, he slipped into a Christmas tune by accident and kept going as a joke, Michael Denner joined in, and Denner suggested they make a Christmas single to show they were not just a serious heavy metal band. The song they wrote from it stayed fast and heavy all the same. It was recorded in the middle of June, and it came out so close to Christmas because the new deal with Roadrunner Records was not finalised until early December. The other track was "Charon", and the European pressing, according to the band's discography, came in a white sleeve with Christmas bells on the front.
Two weeks before Fatal Portrait was due to be recorded, the band changed guitarists. King Diamond told Metal Forces in 1986 that the Swede they had, Floyd Konstantin, had to go just before the sessions, and that the man they called instead was a friend of drummer Mikkey Dee's who was working in Gothenburg, Andy La Rocque. They phoned him at three in the morning to ask whether he could be in Copenhagen by ten; he caught a flight. The first thing they asked of him was a solo on "Dressed in White". He listened to the song three times, and the first solo he played is the one on the album. Dee himself had come from Geisha, another Denmark-based band. The band's discography dates the recording and mixing of Fatal Portrait to July and August 1985 at Sound Track Studio in Copenhagen, with King Diamond and Rune Höyer producing.
King Diamond's stage make-up is older than his band. In 1986 he told Metal Forces that he had worn make-up on stage for ten years, ever since his first band, in which he played guitar, with Alice Cooper as his model throughout. Frightening people was the point, he said: step suddenly towards someone in the front row and they flinch. With the illusions planned for the stage show, it also let people further back in the hall see his face. There was one night without it. In July 2015 King Diamond went on stage at The Rave in Milwaukee bare-faced, and Loudwire reported that, according to a post on his site, a doctor treating him for a severe eye infection had strongly advised him against wearing any make-up.
The music box heard in the first and last tracks of Them is King Diamond's own, the one he had as a child; Decibel pointed this out when it wrote about the 1988 album in 2021. The story centres on a boy named King and on his grandmother's return home from a psychiatric hospital. According to the band's discography the album opens with "Out From the Asylum" and closes with "Coming Home". It was recorded and mixed at M.M.C. Studio in Copenhagen and produced by King Diamond and Roberto Falcao, with Andy La Rocque and Mikkey Dee assisting.
In January 2002, with Abigail II: The Revenge about to come out, King Diamond went public with his anger at Metal Blade Records. In a phone interview with the German magazine Twilight on 16 January, he described what had been planned: a US tour opening on 14 March, two US tours and one European in all at the label's request, and a live album with two shows filmed for a DVD. His own idea was to stage both Abigail albums as a single story: all of the 1987 album except "The Possession", then one of four interchangeable three-song intermission sets from the other records, then the new album in its running order minus perhaps two songs, all to be released as a triple live album. Two days before Christmas 2001, he said, the label told the band it could not provide the tour support after all; financial problems had led it to cut tour support for all its bands.
Bassist Hal Patino came back for Abigail II: The Revenge, his first album with the band since The Eye; the band's member list gives his second spell as running from that album to Give Me Your Soul...Please in 2007. His return nearly brought back another old member. In 2002 Mikkey Dee, by then Motörhead's drummer, told Norway's Metal Express that he had talked with King Diamond about playing on the album because Patino was back, and that Andy La Rocque, a close friend he often went drinking with, had urged him to do it. Dee's own reading of why it did not happen was that King Diamond wanted a drummer who could also stay for the tour, which Motörhead's constant touring ruled out.
When Hal Patino left in July 2014, the bass went to the Swede Pontus Egberg, known from The Poodles, Lion's Share and Zan Clan. His first show with the band was on 25 July 2014 at Gröna Lund in Stockholm, and according to the band's member list he became an official member that December.
In autumn 2015 the band toured the United States playing Abigail from start to finish, from 29 October to a last show in Dallas on 5 December, with Exodus opening. The Philadelphia show at the Fillmore that November and the band's set at Belgium's Graspop Metal Meeting in June 2016 were filmed, and Metal Blade Records released them on DVD and Blu-ray as Songs for the Dead Live in January 2019. Each runs to eighteen songs, with "Welcome Home", "Halloween" and "Eye of the Witch" among those played before the whole of Abigail. The film, directed by Denise Korycki, rides in on the back of the wheelchair wheeled out for "Out From the Asylum" at the start of the show and looks up from inside the coffin as "Funeral" begins. The band's site announced the filming at the time as being for its first-ever live DVD and Blu-ray.
Decibel has inducted two King Diamond albums into its Hall of Fame. Abigail was the first, as the magazine's 84th entry, in its February 2012 issue. Them followed in 2021, with a six-page story built on interviews with every member who played on it.
The next studio album was first announced under another title. In August 2019 the band revealed that its first studio album in twelve years would be called The Institute; King Diamond had said that March that the story was set in a mental institution in the 1920s. He later told Fistful of Metal magazine that the title had changed to Saint Lucifer's Hospital 1920 from the start of the US tour, and that "The Institute" might survive as the name of a song on the album; the band's autumn 2024 North American tour already carried the new title. A story first reported as running across two albums had grown into a trilogy, and King Diamond said he already had all three titles.
"Masquerade of Madness", released in November 2019, was the band's first new song in twelve years, and it had already been played live earlier that year. Andy La Rocque has said he wrote the music first and passed it to King Diamond, who adjusted a few things to suit his vocals and wrote the lyrics, and the two mixed it at Sonic Train Studios. Its video took a long way round. As King Diamond tells it, the band spent one full day and night filming it during rehearsals for the 2019 North American tour, performing with the complete stage choreography; then Covid stopped everything after the tour, and none of them had seen any of the footage. Once writing for new Mercyful Fate and King Diamond records had begun, they asked after it, had a first cut within a couple of weeks, and released the black-and-white clip in October 2023. King Diamond counts it among his favourite videos of the band, along with "Sleepless Nights" and "Welcome Home".
In autumn 2024 the band headlined North America on a tour named after the next album, Saint Lucifer's Hospital 1920. It opened on 15 October at the Boeing Center at Tech Port in San Antonio, Texas, and ran until 6 December in Dallas, with Overkill and Night Demon in support. The set included two new songs, "Electro Therapy" and "Spider Lilly", and the Danish singer Myrkur joined on backing vocals and keyboards. Andy La Rocque explained that both songs were essentially finished, so the band decided to try them out live.
"Spider Lilly", released on 17 December 2024, was the band's first single in five years and the first song taken from a new horror trilogy. King Diamond wrote both the music and the lyrics and plays Hammond organ on it, with the unchanged line-up of Andy La Rocque, Mike Wead, Pontus Egberg and Matt Thompson and with backing vocals from the Danish singer Myrkur. It was the band's first time working with Arthur Rizk, who mixed and mastered it. Part of the video was filmed at the Pennhurst Asylum outside Philadelphia on a travel day of the North American tour, two days before Halloween; only King Diamond himself and the actress Jodi Cachia could take part in the shoot that day.
Who writes the songs? King Diamond said in September 2026 that, averaged over the band's albums, he has written about seventy percent of the music and all of the lyrics: it might seem natural for the guitarist or the keyboard player to write the music, he noted, but in this band it never was. Andy La Rocque has described his side of it. In June 2025 he said he hands over demos made as complete as possible, with programmed drums, keyboards and rhythm guitars, and in March 2026 he said that three of the eight songs he had sent King Diamond about four years earlier had been chosen for the new album. In September King Diamond added that the lyrics for the whole three-album story were finished and that the music for the first one and a half albums was written and ready to record.
In September 2026, talking to Metal Injection, King Diamond explained how July's change of guitarist came about. The decision to part with Andy La Rocque was made over two days, he said, but it had been coming for a while as the two gradually drifted in different directions; after forty years together they remained friends, and La Rocque's other band, Lex Legion, had never been part of the reasons. The first person to suggest Gus G. was Mercyful Fate guitarist Hank Shermann. King Diamond did not know who he was, but Metal Blade Records founder Brian Slagel recommended him too, and the more King Diamond listened, the more interested he became. Gus G. was the first name they discussed, an audition never came up, and Slagel was asked to put the two in touch.