Rockezine.com interview with King Diamond on Jan 29, 2002

with King Diamond on Jan 29, 2002

King Diamonds long awaited new album “Abigail II” has been recently released. The story begins in 1987 when the first Abigail album sees daylight and it turns out to be an immediate success. Now in 2002 we even speak of a classic album, for most King Diamond fans still see “Abigail” as the best King Diamond album ever. After this more albums followed but his latter albums, Spiders Lullaby”, “The Graveyard” and “Voodoo” met with less enthusiasm by the fans. But then the tie changed; King made a killer new album with “Merciful Fate” titled “9” which brought him back to the old days. Also the follow up “King Diamond” Album “House Of God” was again of very high standard. The time was right for the sequel or “The continuing story of Abigail LaFay". And the fans won’t be disappointed, because King has led up to expectations: this will be another classic…. Time for RockEzine to speak with the ever friendly King of "Horror-metal". It’s eight o’clock in the evening when the phone rings….: ”King Diamond speaking”.
		King has been extremely busy the past weeks in giving interviews. I liked the new Abigail album very much; how are the reactions so far on the new release? Well, extremely positive. First I thought that it was a bit risky to do a new Abigail, because people will think that you don’t have inspiration for a completely new story-line. But actually it has turned out to be even more difficult to continue where “Abigail I” ended, because all the lines from the old to the new story have to connect. If you miss one small element, then the complete story-line becomes unclear. I do have 3 other stories in mind that we would like to do, but circumstances brought us in doing a sequel of Abigail.
		Something to do with the many request by fans? Yes, we were getting a lot of request by the public; kids that were asking for a Abigail II album after we did a gig. But most of all, we didn’t want to do anything that we already had done before. It would be to easy for me to sit down and listen to the old “Abigail” album for three weeks and than come up with a sequel; that wouldn’t be progression. Also the line up changed a lot over the years (except for Andy LaRocque on guitars), consisting of all good musicians but with a different style that wasn’t suited for a new “Abigail”. The current line up gave me the backing I needed to make a new” Abigail” that resembled the old one, but which wasn’t a re-make or a copy. Especially Matt Thompson, our new drummer, was drumming like on the old “Abigail” album and really gave me so much of that inspiration back that I had in 1987. Together with Hal Patino coming back in the band and Mike Wead on guitar it was the strongest line up that Andy and I thought we have ever had. So this was the right time and it turned out to work perfectly. “Abigail II” is a completely new album but when played back to back with the old “Abigail” it still works, they really complement each other. Have you heard the entire album, or did you also received this stupid fade out promo version?
		The Album is already in the store for 3 days, so I`ve heard the album. This is again one of those albums that you have to listen from beginning to end without a break. I didn’t understand this promo-version. I wasn’t to happy about this promo version either, but I can understand the record companies point of view, with the risk of illegal internet copies. But with these kind of albums you don’t benefit from fade out cd’s. There’s so much theatricals in there and the songs interlink with each other. The story is so complex, that when you miss parts in between, you lose the essence of it all. The album is more one song with al kind of different choruses in between. Also with the improved studio capabilities we are able to capture this dark atmosphere even more.
		When I was at the Tilburg (013) gig from the “House Of God” tour last year , I noticed this atmosphere being present, but also the problems you had with your voice. What do you remember of this gig? The scariest gig I’ve ever done, knowing that from the beginning your voice is gone due to this cold. It always happens ones on every tour that you get sick, sometimes it effects your voice and sometimes it doesn’t. But on every tour there’s one crewmember that gets sick and you’re all sitting closely packed on this tour bus, so germs are flying all over the place. Last time I got sick, it was in Russia, it was minus eight degrees outside and after a gig the car was late and we were waiting outdoors completely wet from sweat. That’s also the reason that I leave very quickly after finishing a gig, because I need to get out of these wet clothes and into a hot bath to keep my voice optimal and finish the rest of the tour. I feel sorry that I don’t have to much time talking to fans and other bands as much as I would like to. Only once when we were in California, hot weather and at the end of the tour, was I able to stay longer after a performance.
		But the fans in Tilburg were still really supportive and had a lot of respect that you still continued and didn’t cancelled the show. I was really surprised by that, because it was horrible and I wanted to sing perfect if I could of course. But the fans kept supporting me all the way trough the concert and this helped me a lot.
		Talking about the tour; when will be the next tour and what can we expect. I don’t know, we have problems with our record company “Metal Blade” . The plans looked better than they ever had; five mounts ago in the studio the record label wanted to do a tour twice, they wanted to record a live album and we finally decided to do even a triple life album: Two life disks with the Abigail story and one with other life tracks. And they were even talking about two shows on TV. So we were very excited and anxious to start working. We were waiting on the green light from the record company, but than came the news that we couldn’t get the support that we normally would have got. We don’t need a lot but every penny is needed. They would give us about one third of the tour support, because they had to cut back. Metal Blade decided to cut back on tour support on all the bands and so we had to say that we weren’t just one of their bands, they should prioritize and maybe wait with recording a new album with one of the newcomers. Use the money on the big names to make even more money for support of the smaller bands. But maybe the situation is so that it just isn’t possible. But they can’t ask from me to sit and wait the next twelve mounts for the situation to get better and that’s what I said to them. We have to have something to do and the next thing we can do according to our contract is to do a new “Merciful Fate” album. They were given two weeks notice and of course they said they couldn’t do that. But we said if you can’t prioritize and find the money somehow we have to look somewhere else. This decision was made last week and “Fate” is free now. We are already getting faxes, caused by the rumors, of companies that want to have us. But there are a lot of things that can happen. Metal Blade can still come to us, that they have found the money so that we can tour maybe a little bit later this year; not in spring but in September, who knows. The next deadline that they have is the first of May, that’s when they risk losing “King Diamond” as well. I’m sure that there are enough labels that are more than interested in contracting us. It can still be in time for the big European festivals, it all depends on what will happen in the next couple of weeks. All the business shit has to be in order first before we can go on a full tour.
		Do you have any ideas for the stage act? For instance, will there be a real women again playing Miriam and a live baby Abigail? Oh yeah, one of the things that I don’t want to mention yet is something at the end of the show that will really scare people. But apart from that, I want to have a fireplace so that you can really se a fire burning. I’ve found a perfect way to set the wheelchair on fire, so that this girl can really set Jonathan on fire. At the beginning there will be a huge iron gate in front of the stage, so that you can see the band playing behind the gates of “The Mansion”. Of course I’ll be pulling hairs out of that poor girls head. There have to be some real candles, not the fake stuff we had last tour and more of this. It will be bigger than the stage we had during the “House Of God” tour.
		Well 30 minutes have passed so my time is up. Thank you for this interview, good luck with the label and my compliments for this new album can’t be any bigger. Thank you so much and good bye!
(Matthijn Vos)