King Diamond The Graveyard
by Derric Miller
Staff Writer
Screw the theme song to “Friday the 13th,” any single song by King Diamond is in fact the default Halloween song. In honor of this most pagan holiday, Metal Blade has re-released two landmark heavy metal albums, King Diamond’s The Graveyard and The Spider’s Lullaby, both out now. The rereleases come equipped with downloadable bonus material and bootlegs versions of the songs “The Spider’s Lullaby,” “Trick or Treat” and “Up from the Grave.” Bonus treats aside, The Graveyard needs absolutely no tricks or add-ons to stand its ground against Heavy Metal history.
The Graveyard is a concept album, originally released on Massacre Records in 1996. To summarize, the protagonist (King) works for a letch of a mayor, a man who molests his own daughter. After being sent to a sanitarium for being accused of that mayor’s crime, King escapes, lives in a graveyard, kills passersbye, kidnaps the mayor’s daughter (Lucy), and the denouement completes in the graveyard with the three of them, and it’s not a happy ending. Custom made for Halloween …
A rainstorm opens the release, with eerie keys and King Diamond bemoaning his fate and his new home in the graveyard, hiding from those who are looking for this deranged escapee. “I like it out here, it’s nice, and nice, and nice … I like it out here … oh my head, it hurts!” After this guttural yell, it slides into track two, “Black Hill Sanitarium.” King Diamond has clearly influenced dozens if not hundreds of bands, and when you hear this track, you’ll understand why Cage names King Diamond as an influence. It’s the ability to tell a tale, the pageantry, and the sheer METALNESS of the guitars and vocals. When King Diamond sings lines like, “And as I walk the halls at night, I see the other inmates hiding from mine eyes!” You understand: he is crazier than the craziest. The shrill falsetto squeals and angry screams add to the overall insane aura.
Guitarist Andy LaRoque remastered both the re-issues, and he has always been an underrated yet influential talent. When you get to “Heads on the Wall,” one of the slowest songs, you’ll hear both sides to his guitar playing: acoustic and soft passages followed by electric yet smartly-paced emotional leads. “You should know, if you die in a graveyard, the soul can escape if you lose your head.” That is the fairy tale that drives King throughout the story, of decapitated heads holding the soul, and why he kills people like Jeremiah, a grave digger, who had one foot in the grave and just needed a little help with the other.
“Whispers” is where King decides he must kidnap Lucy, to seek revenge on the mayor. So, on “I’m Not a Stranger,” King stalks her, learns her schedule, and then you hear this evil lyric: “Oh Lucy, take my hand. How can I make you understand? I’m not a stranger, I am a friend. I’m going to take you home to daddy … later!” The reason King was in the sanitarium was for hurting Lucy, but it’s clear that he did nothing wrong to her before. But, that was before …
Thus, King takes the girl to the graveyard. Doom-laden riffs open the song “The Graveyard,” and King, who used to be her friend, explains that he’s no longer who he used to be, that he’s lost half his brain and is fighting insanity at every step. King speaks softly and then shouts at her, asking if it’s true that “Little girls don’t cry.” It’s uncomfortable at best, and then launches into an odd galloping rhythm, with King saying “Into the night I go, and you can’t follow me!” His plan is to dig seven graves and put her in one, but of course, says “But I wish you well, in Hell!”
“Meet Me at Midnight” is the message given the mayor, as King calls him in the middle of the night. King explains, “He’s such a sick little man, so much sicker than me … and I am!” You find out that he is Lucy’s dad, and, King will kill her if the mayor doesn’t meet in the graveyard. If you ever wondered why King employed such hysterical vocal styles, it’s all clear now: he’s telling a story, and selling it with every molecule in his vocal arsenal. King caught the mayor molesting his own child, Lucy, but no one believed King, and thus, the impetus for the tale comes full-circle. The shriek “Can’t wait to see your face again,” is rabid and sheer fury.
“Lucy, it’s time for bed now, and you need your rest. So lie down in your coffin dear, and sleep tight. I’ll wake you when daddy’s here, alright?” That’s the opening line from “Sleep Tight Little Baby.” Trying to figure out the sickest and most twisted character in this story makes it that much more fun. Lucy cries more when she hears the word “daddy” than any other time, which will tell you something. A mid-paced rocker, without a real chorus but mostly aural theater, the plot thickens.
Keys greet you on “Daddy,” as the mayor arrives to the graveyard. The voice, done by King Diamond, is Lucy’s voice, “Daddy, don’t look at me like that. I didn’t do it, it was him. I couldn’t never, I wasn’t even there, oh nooooo …” LaRoque blasts into one of his most prominent solos on the release, majestic and mournful. Then the song changes the environment, with King screaming at the mayor, “You’re going down, you’re going down! Sit down you creep! What am I to do with you?” Raging and like a Poe story on LSD, it somehow gets better.
Probably the most straight ahead rocker is “Trick or Treat,” as the album races towards the end. King explains the game, basically hide and seek, playing in the graveyard. Lucy is sleeping in one of seven graves, and the mayor has to decide which grave to dig and find her in. The “trick” is the mayor gets three strikes; if he fails the third time, then King will kill them both. It’s also a race against time, since Lucy is running out of oxygen. Couple this craziness with flying guitar solos, tapping, heated riffs, and drum cacophony from Darrin Anthony, it’s musically the most intricate. King enjoys the game, throwing out one-liners like, “I’m beginning to think you’re digging your own grave, hahahah.” Silly, yet perfect.
“Up from the Grave” is when King knocks out the mayor after he find Lucy on the third try. Not yet done playing with the mayor, King digs her up while losing whatever sanity he has left, and gets her out of the grave, “so you can breathe again.”
After all the horror, the tide turns against King on “I Am.” King realizes the sun has risen, and that the night is somehow, over. The mayor is on the floor, knocked out but starting to wake, while King is just guarding the escape door. The song gets ‘70s groovy 2:10 in, and then, King holds court, accusing the mayor of child abuse. Making himself the judge and jury, and the lawyer for some reason, King asks, “Are you guilty, or are you guilty?” LaRoque’s blistering guitar solo again reinforces why so many bands were influenced by King Diamond—no band has ever had the level of storytelling, vocal flexibility and musical ability that this band wields. “I find you guilty of stealing the innocence of a child, and therefore, we sentence you to die … slowly, die, die die,” in a hiccupping falsetto scream of repeated “dies!”
The story wraps up on “Lucy Forever,” and King is ready to decapitate the mayor at the first light of dawn. He asks Lucy when to strike, and he’ll make daddy disappear. Lucy, for some reason, loosens glass from a broken window above, and the falling glass, at the first light of dawn, decapitates King instead, and kills him. But his soul can’t leave … it’s trapped in his brain. “I guess I would be scared, if I wasn’t already dead.” King keeps talking to her, just a talking head, begging her not to free her father. Fevered riffs carry the track along, frenetic, adept and something Dream Theater would salivate to play. King asks Lucy to bring him home with her, but “not a word to daddy.” She complies, picking up King’s head, stuffing it in her backpack, as King sings, “Lucy forever, I’ll be with Lucy forever.”
The best concept albums can stand alone track by track, and certainly, songs like “Trick or Treat” or “Black Hills Sanitarium” can do so. But the entire creation is infinitely more entertaining if you play it the whole way through. When you compare the quality of this 1996 release to what is being tagged as “shock metal” or “concept album” today, it’s almost embarrassing how King Diamond reigns over them all.
Label: Metal Blade
Track listing:
1. The Graveyard
2. Black Hill Sanitarium
3. Waiting
4. Heads On The Wall
5. Whispers
6. I’m Not A Stranger
7. Digging Graves
8. Meet Me At Midnight
9. Sleep Tight Little Baby
10. Daddy
11. Trick Or Treat
12. Up From The Grave
13. I Am
14. Lucy Forever
HRH Rating: 8.5/10