My King Diamond Review

I’m not the type to write a review of a concert but King Diamond is so spectacular I felt compelled to write something up about this one. Most of the specifics I will keep out so I don’t spoil it for those of you who have not seen it yet.

I saw King Diamond Thursday Oct. 30^th at the Metro in Chicago and again the day after on Halloween at the Rave stage in Milwaukee. I see King Diamond twice every tour in Chicago and Milwaukee ever since the Voodoo tour. The last time King Diamond came to America before Voodoo was nine in a half years earlier for the conspiracy tour. I was bout 11 back then and I was not going to concerts yet and had never heard of King Diamond at that time.

Every time I see King Diamond they amaze me. Even going into it I know its going to amaze my eyes and ears but nothing I can ever do can prepare me and this time around was certainly no different. The King Diamond show I can honestly say is the best show I have ever seen in my entire life. I have seen a lot of great shows. The best of best for me have included Stryper, Sebastian Bach, Twisted Sister, Arch Enemy, Poison, Manowar, Opeth, Immortal, Savatage, Alice Cooper, Doro Pesche, Yngwie Malmsteen and Cinderella. King Diamond easily out does ALL of them. Both performance wise and musically.

On the Puppet Master Tour King starts out with Abigail and Abigail part two, playing the key songs or chapters of the story line. The next segment of the show King Diamond plays five songs off of the new album, “The Puppet Master”. In the next segment of the show King goes through classic King Diamond songs off of some of his other albums starting with Welcome home. The last part(s) of the show King does his encores. Not just one encore, but three encores total. The first and second encores get two songs each and the third and final encore has one song to close the show. The puppet master show is about an hour and thirty minutes in length. The Chicago Show I clocked at an hour and thirty four minutes. In prior tours King usually played about an hour and ten minutes.

King Diamond does a lot of different things in this show. As every tour there is a different stage theme supporting the current album. This time around obviously it was done up like a puppet show for the most part. But that is just the beginning of new things. King for the first time ever brings a back up singer, a young beautiful woman to sing harmony parts. She was excellent. He still has the same actress but with new roles she must play and new costumes. She performs brilliantly as she always has.

The rest of the band are phenomenal musicians as they always have been. The new drummer, Matt Thompson never missed a beat. He even covered Mikkey Dee’s stuff perfectly. During the performance of “Burn” King diamond tossed a tiny little wine glass backward over his head from at least ten feet away and Matt Thompson smacked it down with one of his drum sticks in the middle of playing without missing a beat. That was pretty amazing! The next night in Milwaukee he only nicked the wine glass though..hehehe… The Bass Player, Hal Patino, was great. He was on vintage king diamond albums, Them, Conspiracy and The Eye. He went away for over a decade and now he is back and he is even better than before. His playing really caught my attention during the ballad parts of, “sleepless nights”. Lead Guitarist Mike Weed Also one of the Leads for Mercyful Fate was same ole Mike Weed as he always had been. Mike is a killer guitar player.

And then my favorite the one and only Andy Laroque! The only original member and in my opinion the best guitar player ever. Andy displayed sheer brilliance, talent and emotion in his playing. All of the guitar harmony parts between Andy and Mike were as tight as they could be, even the counter point harmonies. Also, Andy and King are in my opinion the greatest singer/guitarist team ever. There styles and personalities compliment one another perfectly. Andys Vibrato on guitar and Kings Vibrato on vocals are both so eloquent in there deliveries it brings a cozy soothing ness to my soul. When Andy is not resting on a note or playing eighth notes I would watch his picking hand move up and down so fast in tiny movements that it looked like his hand was vibrating rapidly. I can’t believe how fast he can shred when he wants to.

The entire band is loaded with unprecedented talent. In my opinion King has more technical ability with his voice than anyone dead or living that I have heard and I listen to opera music and choral music among other styles. Kings operatic falsetto vocal style is what initially caught my attention and I fell in love with his music at first listen. King can sing in any range, with any voice and in any vocal delivery that he wants to. Every other great singer that I know can only do one or two vocal deliveries and in only one vocal range really well such as Rob Halford, Sarah Brightman and even the opera Valkurie vocalists of Scandinavian culture. King is the only one that I know of that can do so many and do them all flawlessly. I compare King Diamond to a freak of nature such as one of baseballs greatest pitchers ever, Nolan Ryan. In Major League Baseball a pitcher typically lasts only four to six years and then retires because there pitching arm wears out. Nolan Ryan is baseballs freak of nature that played for 26 years as a pitcher until he retired. With vocalists who sing the rougher styles such as screaming and snarling, they usually wear there voice out within a decade. There are many metal screamers from the 80’s metal genre whom today only sound half as good as they use to. Usually this means bad technique and or there voice just isn’t made to do that kind of music forever. King Diamond as been singing with both clean and rough vocals for about 25 years now and he has only gotten better. Through out these two concerts that I saw for the puppet master tour I watched and listened to King Sing songs with the same deliveries in his voice that the songs were recorded with for the albums. Songs that were sung in the studio with falsetto choral deliveries resonating from his throat were sung the same way live. Songs that were more operatic with a sound resonating from his diaphragm in the studio, were sung the same way live and so on and so fourth with all of his vocals. In my opinion no one can touch that in any style of music.

Visually the show was there with the music both complimenting each other perfectly harmoniously. The stage props, the costumes, the special effects, the performance… It was all there.

The audience for both shows were amazing! The Chicago one they were probably a little bit wilder but Milwaukee was certainly not tame by any means. King and band were very loved. Both band and audience had lots of fun. In Chicago I can remember between one of the encores the chants of, King… King… King… King…were done so much in time that you could hear a pin drop between chants. That was a first for me because usually people are to drunk to stay in time and are all over the place in relationship to everyone else chanting.

Both shows I saw on this tour were pretty much the same. It doesn’t matter if it is Halloween or not. Every day to King Diamond is Halloween!

The only complaint I have is that king diamond is the greatest singer that most people do not even know about. But that is not kings fault. Mainstream peoples con formative ways of thinking are both archaic and moronic in my opinion.

In the end of the means the King Diamond experience has left me paralyzed, numb, energized and inspired all at the same time. Now go to www.covenworldwide.org and see a King Diamond show! \m/

Tom

11 – 2 - 2003

P.S. Check out the photos taken before the Halloween show. My friend Mahew is the ultimate King Diamond Imposture. http://eyesoffire.net/fatalportraits/kd103103.htm

Eyes of Fire