Fan-filmed video of KING DIAMOND‘s entire October 25 concert at The Eastern in Atlanta, Georgia can be seen below.
Featured songs:
Funeral 0:00:00
Arrival 0:01:25
Mansion In The Darkness 0:07:20
Intros 0:12:14
halloween 0:14:20
Voodoo 0:19:30
Them 0:24:17
Spiderlily 0:27:34
Two Little Girls 0:32:00
Sleepless Nights 0:35:00
Out From The Asylum 0:40:00
Welcome Home 0:41:46
The Invisible Guests 0:47:56
The Candle 0:53:13
Masquerade Of Madness 1:01:00
The Eye Of The Witch 1:06:09
burn 1:10:40
Electro-Therapy 1:16:08
Abigail 1:23:42
Insanity 1:28:44
KING DIAMOND kicked off its long-awaited North American headlining tour on October 15 at Boeing Center at Tech Port in San Antonio, Texas. The “Saint Lucifer’s Hospital 1920” trek will run through December 6 in Dallas, Texas. Support is coming from OVERKILL and NIGHT DEMON. Additional backing vocals for the KING DIAMOND set are provided by the special guest Myrkur.
KING DIAMOND‘s setlist for the current tour includes two new songs, “Spider Lilly” and “Electrotherapy”.
When the tour was first announced, KING DIAMOND‘s namesake frontman said about what fans can expect: “This is Saint Lucifer’s Hospital. Enter if you dare!
“We have been busy putting this ever-growing horror story together, and it’s still growing. I know the end of it, but how we will get there will be a long trip. There are so many characters, and so many unexpected things along this journey. It’s a crazy family on another timeline in 1920, where I experienced some hard times, and they have to come in our time to steal from us to survive. stage production as well.
“There will be additional backing vocals by Myrkur and she’ll be playing organ for songs that need it. There will be some horrific surprises taking place on stage, but we are not to be held responsible since we are on a whole different timeline in 1920. It was back at the time when medicine was going through a dark period with lots of testing on human beings in order to progress medicine.
“This is Saint Lucifer’s Hospital, also known as The Institute. Enter if you dare!”
KING DIAMOND 2024 touring lineup:
Andy La Rocque – guitar
Mike Wead – guitar
Pontus Egberg -bass
Matt Thompson – drums
Myrkur – additional backing vocals, keyboards
Titled “The Institute”, KING DIAMOND‘s first studio LP in 18 years is tentatively due in 2025 via metalblade. It will be made available as a two-LP horror concept story, with the second part arriving at a later date.
In October 2023, KING DIAMOND released a music video for the 2019 single “Masquerade Of Madness”. The clip was directed by David Brodsky and Allison Woest of MyGoodEye Visuals.
At the time of the video’s release, King commented: “‘Masquerade Of Madness’ was released digitally in 2019 before our North American tour. During rehearsals, we took one full day to film ‘Masquerade Of Madness’ with David Brodsky and Allison Woest. We spent all day and all night recording while performing the song with our full tour stage show choreography. After the tour, Covid happened.
“The video was all but forgotten as the world came to a standstill — we never saw a single frame from all the footage. Years later, as things began to pick up and writing began for both new MERCYFUL FATE and KING DIAMOND records, we wondered, what happened to that video from four years ago? So we decided to check in with David Brodsky and a couple of weeks later, we had the first cut of the video.
“I was speechless! I had nothing to criticize and after just a few notes from Andy La Rocquethe video for ‘Masquerade Of Madness’ it was finished! There’s so much mood and black and white is used in a perfect way with jodi‘s performances. The visuals fit the music flawlessly and this is now among my favorite KING DIAMOND videos along with ‘Sleepless Nights’ and ‘Welcome Home’ — and not to forget of course, our double live DVD.”
A month after KING DIAMOND released “Masquerade Of Madness” in November 2019, KING DIAMOND guitarist Andy La Rocque told The Metal Voice that he came up with the music for the track first before passing it off to Kingwho “needed to arrange a few things and change just a small few things for making it work with his vocals. And then, of course, he wrote the lyrics for it,” the guitarist revealed. “So we [went] a little back and forth until he felt like, ‘Okay, this is cool, man. This is the right key to sing in,’ and all that.”
By 2022 Bloodstock Open Air festival at Catton Park, Walton-on-Trent, United Kingdom, King spoke to Bloodstock TV‘s Oran O’Beirne about his plans for “The Institute”. “Something with KING DIAMONDwe have a very special thing [planned] for that album,” King he said. “It’s gonna be a two-album story. But KING DIAMONDwe are building something that you will never have seen on a stage before — not that way. And with the light guy, he’s never done it that way either. …It’s very different, very sick. You will not have seen musicians standing on stage in that type of light. It’s gonna be very dark. They have to learn to play in dark areas. It’s crazy. I know that our light guy, he can’t wait for us to do it. I showed him some pictures that have the kind of feelings I want, the kind of backdrops I want, stuff like that. … This is gonna blow people’s minds when they see it, I am a hundred percent sure.”
La Rocquewhose real name is Anders Allhagediscussed his vision for the new KING DIAMOND album with The Metal Voicesaying that it will be filled with great “melodies, of course. Super important. Without melodies, there is no music,” he explained. “I’m also envisioning a more organic sound of the album. If you look back to the older albums, when Mikkey [Dee] played [drums for the band]for example, it’s, like, a little bit up and down in tempo, and that makes it dynamic and also organic. So that’s one thing that I would like to hear on the next album, for sure. But building up a dynamic, kind of organic feel, the drummer is a really important thing here, of course. And I know that Matt Thompson [current KING DIAMOND drummer] is the right guy to do this, for sure.”
In March 2019, King told Full Metal Jackie‘s nationally syndicated radio show that the next album from his namesake band will be “absolutely gross” with a story set in a 1920s mental institution. “I chose that because I think it’s a very creepy scenario,” he explained. “And some of the things that go on that we’re gonna show onstage is also things that certainly was going on back then, when medicine was beginning to take a beneficial turn in history and actually being able to help human beings live longer. But there was some experimentation going on, too, that was absolutely thick. Some of that is involved in the story, but it’s something totally different. Once you get to the second part of the story, you will begin to suddenly understand that, ‘What. The hell is going on here? What is this really? about?’ ‘Cause there’s a whole different story that won’t come to you until second part. But in the first part, you’re gonna get to know a lot of people at a certain place… Some of it takes place here, this world, and some of it takes place in a parallel world. And there’s a correlation between what happened to me and what happens to some people in this place and where they suddenly appear. And you will find out why they are there, how they appear there and the places. down the road. I won’t say too much right now, but it’s gonna be very creepy.”
KING DIAMOND received a Grammy nomination in the “Best Metal Performance” category for the track “Never Ending Hill” off the band’s last album, 2007’s “Give Me Your Soul…Please”.
“Give Me Your Soul…Please” sold 4,500 copies in the United States in its first week of release to debut at position No. 174 on The Billboard 200 chart.
KING DIAMOND released to DVD/Blu-ray, “Songs For The Dead Live”in January 2019 via Metal Blade Records. The set captures 1987’s seminal “Abigail” album in its entirety, twice, and in very different venues: Belgium’s Graspop Metal Meeting in June 2016 and Philadelphia’s Fillmore in November 2015. The performances feature KING DIAMOND‘s current band, comprising of guitarists La Rocque and Mike Weadbassist Pontus Egberg and Matt Thompson.
