It turns out that King Diamond is more of a hard-working, average Joe than an ominous prince of darkness. This fact became immediately obvious when we first attempted to interview the former Mercyful Fate singer, who had to reschedule due to a force beyond his control: a broken furnace. It took a moment to wrap my mind around the fact that the man who had caused such a stir with his seemingly dark lyrics and dramatic stage show was not too far removed from any of his fans. After crawling around an uncomfortably cold attic, getting one hour of sleep, and still suffering from a herniated disc, King Diamond deserved all the time he needed to get back with us.
Some musicians have been known to take their time when rescheduling an interview, but the man born Kim Bendix Petersen got in touch with us just one week later. If you had any negative preconceptions of King Diamond, his interview with Ultimate-Guitar might just alter your opinion. He’s been accused of being Satanic and a bad influence, but believe it or not, he’s passionate about protecting children from violence and refuses to declare any religion is right or wrong.
If it weren’t for severe pain caused by his herniated disc, King Diamond would currently be on tour in support of his namesake band’s latest album Give Me Your Soul…Please (which features the Grammy-nominated track “Never Ending Hill”). It may take a few more months to complete the healing process, but fans should likely still get an opportunity to see King Diamond’s legendary stage show at some point this year.
UG: A lot of fans were concerned after they heard about the postponed tour due to your herniated disc. How is your health right now?
King Diamond: It’s amazing to see the understanding and the support. That helps a lot, actually. Probably a lot more than people think because I want to get out of this situation. I want to get back on the road. I want to write more music. It’s frustrating to be thrown into a situation against your will, and that’s pretty much what it’s been. It’s getting better, though. It’s the biggest test of my patience and my will ever, so it’s way too slow for me. There are all these things that you can’t do and things you suddenly discover.
There are so many other people that are way worse off than I am. But for me and what I’m used to with work, it’s hard. I have stood up to eat my dinner since last April. I can’t sit down. Ten minutes on a couch and I’m like, “Ahh!” Then I get some pain in my left shin, but I’ve been walking throughout all of the interviews in the last 3 or 4 hours. Right after it happened, I can tell you my left leg looked like it came right out of a concentration camp.
It’s a pretty rough thing to happen right after you receive such accolades for your latest album Give Me Your Soul…Please. There have been plenty of fans that believe this is your best album to date.
There is something unique about it. We hit something with the songwriting right off the bat. I wrote the lyrics and stuff, but with the music itself there was something. I don’t know what it was; it’s really hard to explain. Everybody contributed to the music. We took one drastic measure when we mastered the album and went away from what’s the norm. Normally it’s got to be a certain volume for this and that, and you can only hear that at the mastering sessions by compressing and limiting the music. What those things do to music is usually washing details. I hate it! You put so much into recording things, and then they get washed out just to mix them together in a better way. I don’t think it’s a better way.
This time we agreed, “No.” If we mix the music to sound like we want, why should we now go back and wash out the details? It makes no sense. So you can hear more details and more of what was put into the vocals. And Hal’s bass guitar – you can hear every note Hal plays for the first time ever. Usually bass guitar becomes just a low frequency rumble underneath, and it must be frustrating for most bass players to not be heard. This time, you can hear every note he plays and it’s so much cooler!
I’m involved with what is done with the bass guitar and also the drums. Hal has so many ideas and it blows my mind sometimes. There might be a piece where he’s like, “Yeah, I don’t know what to do here.” I have the advantage that I know the melody of the vocals, so I can hum it to him. So I’ll sing it to him and go, “Maybe you can try and follow the vocals and do a harmony to what I’m doing now.” Then I know that’s what I’m going with later. You get more out of it.
Your 2003 album The Puppet Master was recorded at your home studio. Did you use the same setup for the new album?
We had some new upgraded equipment that we used. With the equipment we used, it’s not like we have a home studio that has that. Andy, the guitarist, has a studio in Sweden where lots of bands record. It’s his gear that we fly out to my house, and then we turn my living room into practically a studio with top professional gear. We record bass guitar, rhythm guitars, harmony guitars, and most of the keyboards, and then we do go into a normal recording studio. That’s where we cut the drums, and that’s also where the vocals are cut. Then we mix it here at the house as well with top pro gear.
One thing that’s good about doing it like that is, of course, we get more time. We can spend 3 hours if we want to find the right reverb in a song. It’s just a matter of whether we want to take the time or not. We feel like we have more time to go in and mix the album. The speakers I have here are studio monitors and you can’t buy them in the stores. It’s the same speakers that Andy uses in his studio. The quality there is absolutely top-notch.
 |
| "If we mix the music to sound like we want, why should we now go back and wash out the details?" |
How did the original storyline behind Give Me Your Soul…Please develop?
There is always so much that goes into it. It’s almost like my body is a factory and I get all these raw materials from different places. Some of the raw materials are already in the factory, but then you build a product from all of that. There is a lot more in the King Diamond story that I can relate to so closely – more closely than people will ever know. Sometimes when these albums get released, I do get that feeling, “God, you put so much of yourself into this.” But who’s going to know unless I tell people?
For this one, I tried to go from a different perspective. It was the first time I ever wrote a story in the present tense. There is no past tense in it. It takes place as you listen to it. It was weird not to be able to use words like “could” and “would.” It was all “can” and “will,” “right here and now in your face.” It takes place in my house, and my house looks a little different than I think the house does in the story. I’m looking right now at the mirror in my hallway, which is the one on the front cover. The front cover, they had to shorten it a little bit. It’s much longer here in my house.
There was a little bit of dilemma when we talked about the children that died in the story. They’re already dead in the beginning. The girl in the story knows that they are dead and she’s knows the situation, but her little brother doesn’t really know where he is. In the story they were both killed by their father, and then their father committed suicide. I’m not a religious person, but in this story I said that there were 13 judges that judge people when they die. When the little boy comes up begging for his father, they mistake him for his father who committed suicide. The little boy is like, “No, this is mistake! You can’t do that!”
Imagine if you just had one chance when you die, and you’ll be judged by angels or God or 13 judges. Imagine if they made a mistake! And why couldn’t they? It’s just a frightening thought that here you are, you live your perfect life and then they mistake you for someone else. The little girl takes the initiative to go back to this earth where we live and cross over with the help of a couple other spirits to see if she can find a soul that’s free from sin to bring back to her brother. Then they can go back together to the other side.
She tries to kill me several ways steal my soul, but eventually I convince her that you don’t want my soul. If you bring that back to her brother, he’ll fly straight to hell. Eventually she gets convinced and musters up the power to go to another house to find a soul free from sin. That’s kind of how the album ends. She says, “I’m moving on to this house.” It will come out of the different speakers, so she may come to your house and get your soul.
I have read that part of story was inspired by a news story in which parents were arrested for killing their children. Can you talk a bit about where that inspiration came from?
I wanted to keep the story in the present tense, so the problem became, “How do I describe how they die?” I found this way where I have this experience down in the cellar, where I almost see them, but I don’t because these things are flying out of my eyes. I barely make it out there and I’m so exhausted I almost drift into a dream, but I feel these pictures in red being sent into my brain by the little girl. With those pictures, she explains how they died. The way the children died came straight of the news from today. I think it’s weird to turn on the news, and yet another one. No one can figure out how to reduce it. How do you pinpoint those who are about to snap? You hear all these stories from family members or neighbors afterward going, “Oh, I thought everything was great over there. They were always so nice.” Suddenly daddy has killed mom, or mommy has killed her 3 kids.
Many people will possibly be surprised or even shocked to know that King Diamond, a figure who has often had a lot of negative connotations thrown at him, has such a strong sense of empathy. Has it ever bothered you to think that people often misinterpret the message in your music?
Yeah, but it’s kind of my own fault, too! When you look at it, the makeup and this and that, most people are like, “Wow.” But even the makeup has meaning. It’s changed a couple times throughout my career. The one that it is now has some modifications to it, but it’s the one from House Of God. It represents very much of me. The makeup you see, it’s all these crosses going this way and that way. It’s kind of showing a person that is religiously very confused and doesn’t have a firm direction. I don’t. That whole thing came about through personal thought.
If there is a God, why on Earth can’t he show himself to the world so that we can avoid all these wars? Religious difference is one of the big reasons, and it’s always like that. It’s still like that. Muslims and Christians, Protestants and Catholics – no matter what your ethnic background, it makes so little sense to me that people can’t accept the fact that none of us know for sure. I totally respect that people have a firm religious belief and it gives them something and they are convinced themselves, especially if they respect that others are different. Then I have no problem with them. I never have. But when people don’t respect that others are different and they turn it into wars, the logic stops. Not one single person on this Earth can prove to the rest of the population that they believe in the only right God. I’m not the person that comes and says, “There is no God.” How do I know?
It’s totally fine to believe in something and I certainly understand that some people get into certain situations. I’ve been in those situations myself, too, but it wasn’t enough for me. I almost crashed in a plane. Did you see the plane in Germany with the plane that had all those wind shears coming in? I had an identical experience. We were going to land in St. Louis and then fly on to Seattle. We had that same thing where the plane was back and forth, and it was maybe 2 feet from touching. It was scary. It was like a big hand took the plane. Everybody on the plane was screaming, “I don’t want to die! I don’t want to die!” That was the only time where I had my life flash by. It was like, “That’s it. Bye-bye.” It went sideways for a while, and then it landed on the ground. Of course there were many more clapping hands than there are at one my concerts!
 |
| "There is a lot more in the King Diamond story that I can relate to so closely." |
With such a strong theme on the album like that of a parent murdering a child, what kind of reaction have you received?
There have been some journalists that have children themselves that say, “You have totally changed my view. Now I take my 6-year-old daughter to and from school every day. I’ve changed my work schedule.”
How do you feel when you hear that you’ve had such a profound effect on some people’s lives?
It’s hard to describe. I’ve had letters, with one of them about committing suicide. He said he had a radio station playing in the background and was about to cut his wrists, then one of our old songs came on. He heard that and for whatever reason, he stopped what he was doing. He heard what it was called and then he went down to a record store. He sent a letter to me right away, and I’m thankful that I got it. In it he said, “As long as you do albums, I will be alive.” Thanks for the pressure! But it’s really heartwarming!
There was one time where a guy said he had a friend that was dying in the hospital, and it would be amazing if I could give him a call. Of course, you do stuff like that. There was another guy that had sent some albums for us to sign because he had lost a friend who was a big fan. His biggest wish was to have some albums with him in his coffin. I signed the albums and got them all to him. It’s very difficult to explain how it feels. It doesn’t feel good, but it is a good feeling that it did do something good for someone. It’s tough to hear those stories.
It sounds like you have some incredibly devoted fans.
We have the best fans you could ever wish for. They know us pretty well. We’re honest, that’s one thing. Everything we do comes straight from the heart. It really does and always has. I can thank the record label for that. They always gave us artistic freedom, which gave us the opportunity to create our own style. It’s kind of like we’ve been on the back road all the time. We’ve never followed any trends and have done our own thing, but we also never got millions. There was the alternative movement, but we just drove on the back road with our own style. That, and our fans have a lot to do with why we’re still here. It’s a whole new generation at the shows. There are kids in the front row and they know every word. The songs were written before they were born! It’s not like it’s outdated music or something. You can’t categorize it like that.
Even though the King Diamond band started back in 1985, you still seem to be on the rise. Between the young fan base and the attention from the Grammys, does it feel like you’ve come full circle?
Some people are like, “So when are you going to retire?” Well, I don’t know. I haven’t thought of it. We didn’t do things that I would call black metal. It was always something that was so hard to put labels on. A lot of bands have said a lot of nice things about us and it’s a big honor, but I never think about it. We just do what we like to do.
The Grammy doesn’t change anything. It’s a very nice honor and I’m definitely honored to get it. I have to explain how surprised I was because I never saw anything like that happening in my lifetime. The only time I would pay attention to the Grammys was if I knew Metallica was performing. I would watch it then, but otherwise it wouldn’t interest me. I don’t think it makes anyone better or worse. When you think about it, there were 5 bands in our category that were nominated and they were picked from all the bands in the world. That’s pretty nice!
Do you already have ideas or storylines that you’re ready to write about at a moment’s notice? If so, are they waiting around in the back of your mind until you put pen to paper?
Absolutely. They are not in my head right at this moment, but if I get an idea for something I’ll put Post-It Notes in a box. I have a box so full of Post-It Notes! That’s how The Puppet Master album came about, to give you a perfect example. We were supporting Metallica at some big stadium show in ’99. We had an off day in Budapest and came into this little street. All the shops were closed because it was Sunday over there. We passed these shops full of puppets, and there was an entrance to something called The National Puppet Theater. My mind started thinking, “How big are the puppets if they have that many people there?” This was a real puppet theater. Seeing the puppet shops was eerie because they were closed and there was no light in there, but you could go to the window and look in. I wouldn’t sleep in any of those shops! They might come alive or something. It was creepy.
Coming back to the hotel that night, I started writing on the notepad. I sat back for a few hours and wrote down things and ideas. Then another time when we came back from the tour, I just put them in my box. We had done a couple of albums since, and I was going through all these notes and it just spoke to me a little more than it had the other years. The event came back so vivid. But all those things were written down on little notes, and it was the right time to do it.
Interview by Amy Kelly
Ultimate-Guitar.Com © 2008
/ my profile 
I also think the guitar work is very cool. Think I'll just go and play a bit... "The invisible guests" is a good idea 
