Fan-filmed video of KING DIAMOND‘s entire June 16 concert at Alcatraz in Milan, Italy can be seen below.
Featured songs:
01. Arrival
02. A Mansion in Darkness 6:51
03. Halloween 11:33
04. Voodoo 15:56
05. “Them” 20:48
06. Spider Lilly 23:33
07. Two Little Girls 28:24
08. Sleepless Nights 31:07
09. Out From The Asylum 36:17
10. Welcome Home 37:47
11. The Invisible Guests 42:23
12. The Candle 47:31
13. Masquerade Of Madness 54:10
14. Eye Of The Witch 58:19
15. Burn 1:02:33
16. Abigail 1:06:17
KING DIAMOND launched its spring/summer 2025 European tour on June 4 at the Sweden Rock Festival in Sölvesborg, Sweden.
The band’s lineup for the current trek consists of King Diamond on lead vocals, Andy La Rocque and Mike Wead on guitars, Pontus Egberg on the bass, and Matt Thompson on drums. Greek female vocalist Hel Pyre, who previously played bass for NERVOSA, is handling backing vocals on the trek.
In a new interview with Finland’s Chaoszine, La Rocque spoke about the progress of the songwriting and recording sessions for KING DIAMOND‘s forthcoming horror trilogy, part one of which is titled “Saint Lucifer’s Hospital 1920”. He said: “Right after the [fall 2024] U.S. tour, we talked about, ‘Okay, let’s just take a short break and we start working on the next few songs right away,’ because we have most of the songs like a demo thing of most of the songs. But then we had some issues with… I’m not gonna go into that, but there were some diseases, people were sick for a long time, and then the time just ran out kind of thing. And then we had to start planning the European tour [for the summer of 2025]. It’s, like, ‘Wow.’ We now will, after going back from this European summer tour, we will just have a short break and then go back into recording the stuff.”
Asked if all the lyrics for the next KING DIAMOND album have been written, Andy said: “[KING DIAMOND frontman and namesake has] got all the ideas in [his head]. A lot of lyrics are already done. He’s got everything in [his head]. A lot of small Post-it notes everywhere with lyric lines and stuff like that. The whole story is pretty much there. So we just need to start recording the music in a proper way. And we’ve got demos of a lot of things. I mean, I think I have seven or eight songs kind of already. Demo needs to change, drums need to change, a few things, we could use that. But King also has a lot of ideas and songs. So we’ll see how many of my songs will end up on the album — maybe three, maybe four. I don’t know. We’ll see. But we have a lot of music, that’s for sure.”
Elaborating on the KING DIAMOND songwriting process, Andy said: “I would say me and King write the music. That’s how we want it to be. And we try to write it as complete as possible when we present it to each other. Sometimes it’s not complete — it’s like a guitar riff, maybe a click track or a drum machine. And sometimes it is kind of complete, except for we need real drums on it because usually on the demos it’s like a programmed drum machine, things like that. Sometimes I play the bass, and we want [KING DIAMOND bassist] Pontus [Egberg] to play the bass, of course, but for the demos [I sometimes play the bass] to get the complete picture of what we want. And also I try to make as much of the keyboards as possible too. And same with King. And then when we think that, ‘Okay, this might be a good song,’ so we’ll send it to each other. And then we start doing arrangement. King can call me and say, ‘I think you should just take that part out or double that section because that’s really good.’ So that’s how we work out things. And maybe I can tell him, like, ‘That solo section or that section of the song is really good to play a solo on, so maybe we can use that instead of what yet have.’ Things like that, arrangement-wise.”
Andy also talked about the new KING DIAMOND songs “Electro Therapy” and “Spider Lilly” which were first performed during the band’s fall 2024 U.S. tour. He said: “We were kind of done with these songs. That’s why we decided to try to play them live and see how it works out. And that’s what we did. So, for example, ‘Spider Lilly’ is gonna be on the album. And we play that live. And it’s also released on video. So, yeah, that’s how we do it. We don’t have to wait for a whole album. We thought, ‘We need to put out something now for the fans.'”
During the chat, La Rocque addressed his previous comment that he wanted the next KING DIAMOND album to have a more organic sound, similar to how it was on some of the band’s early efforts. Asked if he and his bandmates will have to do a lot of “tweaking” in the studio to achieve this sound, Andy said: “Not really. That’s what we don’t do this time around. We don’t do a lot of tweaks to it. It’s organic also in the way of the playing is not like copied and pasted, stuff like that. It’s more relaxed play. And there might be some things you hear that are like, ‘Oh, yeah…’ We’re gonna keep that… Because that’s what we had back in the ’80s too when we recorded an album. Everything wasn’t perfect — more organic, and not everything triggered and sound like everyone else. But we want a more acoustic, kind of more of the acoustic drums, and stuff like that, to make it a little bit more organic. It doesn’t have to be perfect everywhere. It’s good, but some things might not be a hundred percent, only 99.99, you know what I’m saying? But that’s also to make everything like a more loose or organic feel to it. Of course it’s gonna be good. We don’t release anything that we’re not happy with.”
As for when “Saint Lucifer’s Hospital 1920” might see the light of day, Andy said: “We have been talking about we have to have it recorded before Christmas. That’s the plan we have. Then if someone gets sick or whatever happens, then if that’s not the case, we’ll see. But that’s the plan we have. We have to record everything by Christmas. So that means it’s coming out next spring.”
On the topic of KING DIAMOND‘s touring plans in support of “Saint Lucifer’s Hospital 1920”, Andy said: “I don’t know. Maybe next fall [we will be back on the road]. I don’t know yet. We don’t really have any plans with that yet. We’ll see. When the album’s done, we’re gonna start working on a new cycle, so that includes touring. But hopefully, yes.”
In a separate interview with Fistful Of Metal magazine, King stated about the status of the long-awaited new KING DIAMOND album: “Well, for starters, the original name that we had picked was ‘The Institute’. However, that has now changed to, ‘St Lucifer’s Hospital 1920’, since the start of the U.S. tour. There very well may be a track on the album called ‘The Institute’. We were supposed to release the album this year, and in fact the album was supposed to be completely finished prior to the live shows, but I just want to make sure that it’s the best material I’ve ever released. Right now, we are gearing up to film the next video for the single ‘Lobotomy’, which will definitely be released later this year. Other songs that are completed are an intro track called ‘Under The Surface’, ‘The Institute’, ‘The Nun’, ‘Faceless’ and, of course, ‘Spider Lilly’. There’s another track, which I’m not sure is going to be on the album yet, called ‘Deep In The Darkness 1920’. Andy has been working on at least five tracks, one of which has as monster chorus that we plan to record with a choir. The plan is that this album will be the first of a trilogy, and I already have all three album titles.”
Last December, KING DIAMOND released a studio version of “Spider Lilly”. It was a first-time mixing collaboration with Arthur Rizk, who also mastered the track. The music and lyrics were written by King Diamond.
The official music video for “Spider Lilly” was directed by My Good Eye Visuals. Part of the clip was filmed at the very haunted Pennhurst Asylum outside of Philadelphia on a travel day during the band’s 2024 North American tour, two days before Halloween. It was only King himself and actress Jodi Cachia who could participate on that specific day, together with producer David Brodsky, Allie Woest and their crew.
KING DIAMOND performed “Spider Lilly” live for the first time at the kick-off concert of the band’s 2024 North American headlining tour, which launched on October 15 at Boeing Center at Tech Port in San Antonio, Texas. The “Saint Lucifer’s Hospital 1920” trek ran through December 6 in Dallas, Texas. Support came from OVERKILL and NIGHT DEMON. Additional backing vocals for the KING DIAMOND set were provided by the special guest Myrkur.
In November 2024, the KING DIAMOND shows in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada (November 20 at Edmonton Convention Center),Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada (November 21 at TCU Place),Calgary, Alberta Canada (November 22 at Grey Eagle Event Centre),Portland, Oregon (November 24 at Keller Auditorium) and Seattle, Washington (November 25 at The Moore Theatre) were canceled due to “unforeseen circumstances”.
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 My Good Eye Visuals.
A month after KING DIAMOND released “Masquerade Of Madness” in November 2019, La Rocque told The Metal Voice that he came up with the music for the track first before passing it off to King, who “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.”
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 a DVD/Blu-ray, “Songs For The Dead Live”, in January 2019 via Metal Blade Records. The set captured 1987’s seminal “Abigail” album in its entirety, twice, and in very different locales: Belgium’s Graspop Metal Meeting in June 2016 and Philadelphia’s Fillmore in November 2015. The performances featured KING DIAMOND‘s current band, comprising of guitarists La Rocque and Mike Wead, bassist Pontus Egberg and Matt Thompson.
Photo in poster by Jeremy Saffer
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