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Bare Me Your Soul...Please?
by Matt Smith
On a dreary, rainy day in 1987, I purchased an album (yes, it was vinyl, with a big sleeve so you could see the cover in detail, the way it was meant to be seen) and brought it home and played it that night before laying my head down to sleep. The record was a concept album and the story was about a stillborn child that had come back to haunt descendants of her mother, who, on July 7, 1777, had been murdered by her husband, Count DeLafey, for her adulterous ways. As I sat on my bed with my headphones on, reading along with the lyric sheet and listening to the haunting metal music, all written and superbly executed by talented musicians assembled by one man, King Diamond, I slowly realized I would not be sleeping soundly that night. If it wasn't the King's haunting falsetto and sometimes (when appropriately accentuating a particular line in a song), guttural growling voice, it was the story he had concocted for his latest magnum opus, and in this case, it was an album titled, Abigail. I would have the same reaction when listening to his next release Them, in 1988 and I knew was hooked for life, or at least until someone came along and scared me as successfully with music as he did with those two aforementioned albums, but no one has since beaten him at that honor!
Shortly after buying Abigail, I quickly purchased his back catalog, which at the time was basically Fatal Portrait and his Christmas jingle single, No Presents For Christmas (which is still a favorite of mine to play when the holiday season starts) as well as his previous band, Mercyful Fate's albums. I was also lucky enough to see him in a small club in Providence, RI, called the Living Room, where I literally sat on the corner of the stage for the Them tour (I still have an Andy LaRocque guitar pick from that night) and witness the power that was King Diamond first hand. Over the years I bought every horror-themed concept and musically challenging album he released and saw him three more times, once on the Conspiracy tour (complete with his burning coffin trick), and once when Mercyful Fate reunited for the first time in 1993, and then the last time on the Deadly Lullabies tour that brought him to my hometown of Worcester, MA for the 2005 Metal Fest at the Palladium. To say the King is one of my favorite artists in the music world is an extreme understatement.
King Diamond's personal life has always been shrouded in mystery to me (and most fans I talk to), and I've only known what I've read in articles and interviews with the man, so when I was given the opportunity to interview King Diamond, I already knew what I wanted to ask him, but it turned into so much more than I expected. Calling from his home in Texas, I found him to be very soft-spoken, warm and accommodating, and it made wonder for a moment, is this really him, or someone pulling a joke on me on my birthday? But it WAS the king of horror metal on the other line...King, is that really you???
King Diamond: Hey Matt
GASP: Hey King how's it going?
King: Alright, how are you doing?
GASP: I'm doing excellent thanks and I just want to say it's an honor speaking with you and it's especially great because today's my birthday.
King: Congratulations man!
GASP: Thanks! Are you calling from Texas?
King: Yes, I'm in Texas.
GASP: So you're still living in Texas. Have you become a US citizen?
King: Yes I have.
GASP: You like it in Texas?
King: Absolutely, yes. One of the first times I was touring here I had some very good experiences here and my wife and my ex-wife live here and that was part of the reason I moved here. But I really love it here.
GASP: That's great. I really love the new album, Give Me Your Soul...Please it's one of your most musically rich sounding albums to date and it seems you're going back to the young girl being the victim of the story. This seems to be a reoccurring theme in many of your albums, even going way back to Mercyful Fate Melissa, and your first solo release Fatal Portrait where the young girl is a victim and comes back in spirit form seeking revenge. Why do you choose this as a theme in many of your concepts for albums?
 King: Well, it has to do with children being victimized and how they're not able to defend themselves and in the new story there's a boy also, he's the little girl's brother and they're both involved in a murder-suicide at the hands of their father. It's so prevalent in our society and there doesn't seem like there's a lot to do about it, I mean how do you stop it? Why does someone feel like they have to take someone else with them when they want to commit suicide? You have this in the schools and colleges and it just keeps growing and I know it's not the worse problem in the world but it's certainly a problem. I mean what's going on?
GASP: Yeah, it's a very selfish act.
King: And in the new video for the song "Give Me Your Soul", (youtube) it explains the story of the murder-suicide of the children with a question mark regarding religion, where nobody has proof about what might be right, or the right god, nobody has proof of whatever god they believe in and just because I don't believe in any religion doesn't mean I don't think there isn't a god. I don't know if there is one god or a thousand, I just don't know. No one has proof of anything and they'll wage war in the name of their god and they don't have proof of any thing. I put that theory in the story where the children die and they meet these 13 Judges in the afterlife and they judge you by what you have done in your life and if you're good you go to a good place and if you're bad you go to a bad place. And these judges mistake the little boy for the dad and say he was a suicide and he's going to hell. So he's put in like a waiting room and that's where his sister tries to get him a pure soul from this world so he can be saved from going to hell. And the soul of the little girl comes to my house and tries to kill me for my soul and I tell her you don't want my soul because it's not pure and she has to move on and find another house and she might be coming to your house. But that's just one of the topics the story covers and it was based on this mirror in my house and that's where the girl first appears to me. I have a black cat named Magic, and I put him in the story, too. You know I put alot of things from my own life into my stories. You know some of my stories take pace in the 17th century and I try and recognize some of the things from that time period to take you back to the feel of that era.
GASP: Yeah, you've always put a lot of thought into the background of the time period your stories take place in and that really helps illustrate the point of the concept. Another topic you frequently use is religion, that seems to pop up in your stories, and mostly it has to do with the disturbing things that happen in the Christian and more specifically the Catholic religion. The whole point of hell in the Catholic religion was really based on Dante's Inferno where you have a section/tier in hell for suicides, and more disturbing, a section for unbaptized babies. That's pretty much a horror story unto itself, I mean to say an innocent unbaptized baby that dies that hasn't had a chance to even really realize what is going on and to send it to hell? That's twisted!
King: Yeah, a baby has no will and doesn't know wrong from right, I mean that hits the nail right on the head.
GASP: So what is your opinion of the afterlife, I know you've touched upon it before but what do you think happens when we die? Especially knowing all of the contact you've had with supernatural entities in your life.
King: Again, you know it would be just a theory. I have had a lot of experiences but they don't explain anything to me. There definitely is something out there. You know they have all these programs about ghost hunters but no one really knows. You don't know whether it's an afterlife or existing on another plane, I don't know those things. The only thing I can say that I'm sure of is personally, I'm sure I'm gonna meet my mom and dad again. And one of my cats I'm sure I'm gonna meet in a way I'll recognize, but you know I really have no proof.
GASP: I agree with you and you bring up a point I made in the review I wrote for Give Me Your Soul... and that was, why doesn't King Diamond have some sort of "Ghost Hunter" type of show? It could be called something like "Ghost Hunting With the King" and it would be so much more entertaining than the trash that's out there now like Gene Simmons' crappy show, I don't want to see how Gene makes his money, I want to be entertained intelligently. (laughs)
King: (laughs) I know, I would definitely be interested in something like that. I mean I have such high respect for those powers. It would have to be here because it's not like "oh you're here, hopefully there still hanging around", it's not like they go away when I'm around. Yeah, and my wife is not too happy when things like that occur.
GASP: So your wife gets a little spooked by it when it occurs?
King: Oh, yeah, oh yeah!
 GASP: I've never really experienced anything supernatural. I think the closest I've ever come to something like that was when my grandfather died, I remember my mother telling me he had died as I was waking up the morning after he died and then I heard three knocks coming from the corner of my room, near the ceiling, and they were very distinct and I looked at my mother and said, "did you hear that?" and she said "yeah" and we were both kind of in awe. It was like my grandfather was sending me a message that everything was okay. I later found out from my grandmother that I was his favorite grandchild. And speaking of my grandmother, before she died she had actually died one of the times she was in the hospital and they revived her and I was able to ask her what it felt like and she told me it was the most peaceful feeling she's ever experienced and she didn't want to come back. So those two experiences are the closest I've come and they give me an indication that there's something out there. But really, no one has ever died for a long period of time and come back, so we'll never know until we die so we have to hold on to those types of experiences.
King: Yes, and for you it must be really nice, for you yourself to hear that kind of thing and it gives you peace of mind when that day comes. When my time comes, and I don't want to die now, I have a lot more I want to accomplish before I die, but I know when that time comes I will see my parents again.
GASP: Yeah, and it's interesting that you mentioned seeing one of your cats again in the afterlife. I feel the same way because I'm a cat lover and I've had cats my whole life and I've also had to have two of them euthanized because they were so sick, and the last one, she was definitely the one I connected with psychically most, even to the point I would wake up from having a dream about her and having comforting feelings from her and she would be lying at my feet looking right at me and I felt she was projecting these psychic messages to me. And on the day I brought her to be euthanized, right before the vet injected the needle I told her I loved her and I would see her again soon, whether it's in this life, you know if she's reincarnated in another cat I may adopt, or I'll meet her in the afterlife when I die, I just knew we were connected. I don't believe in heaven or hell but I do believe there's some sort of karmic connections we share with each other in this plane of existence and that's pretty much how I feel about the people and animals we meet in this life, we're all connected and may meet again and who knows, maybe I'll be the cat in my next existence and one of my cats could be my owner?
King: You and I feel identically about those things and I've had those same experiences with my cat and I know the bond between us.I've never harmed any of my cats and I even talk to them even though they may not understand the words but if I say his name, "Magic" he'll look and recognizes it.
GASP: Yeah, they do understand to a certain level.
King: It's a deeper understanding and communication and a big heart they have, it's like children, they become our children totally and there's so much love and a deep bond and who knows how we'll meet each other in the afterlife, it could be like you said our souls may be reversed. It's pretty cool to hear you say those things because they reflect how I feel.
(A little aside note, a day or two after this interview I noticed my black cat "Peanut" had been using my King Diamond Abigail back patch on my denim jacket as a scratching post! Coincidence??? Hmmm!)
GASP: I know, people who aren't animals lovers don't understand the bond we have with our pets. I have to ask you, with all of your experiences with the supernatural, have you had any negative experiences with spirits/entities you've encountered or have they mostly been peaceful?
King: There was one time while I was living in Denmark and I came home and walked up to my apartment and the weird thing is it was like the living room was divided by an invisible wall and I couldn't move my head from side to side and it would be there and it would go away. It was so strong I can't forget and no matter how hard I tried I couldn't move and I was like "get out of here". That was definitely a negative experience. And there was one time a girl was pulled by the hair by something. But otherwise you know there have been a lot of things like moving around, like a glass moving on a table for no apparent reason. And it wasn't just me, there were other people there. There was once when I was coming back from a meeting we were having about the cover for the Melissa album and I came back after midnight and I was pulled by my hair and I thought someone had followed me into the apartment and I turned around and there was no one there. And then there was a time when I was sitting down on my sofa in my living room in my apartment and there was this comforter I was using and I got up to go get something to eat and I was really tired and I heard a noise in the living room and when I went back in to the living room the comforter was lifted up like completely in the air by gravity and I know didn't stand it up like that. And then I turned off the light and went to get under the comforter and sure enough there was nothing under it and It was totally psyching me out and I was like "I'm really tired and I would really appreciate if you would come another time" and it went away, just like that. That's just one of many little things that happened in that apartment. And one time I had these journalists come to the apartment to check it out but nothing happened while they were there.
 GASP: Wow, it sounds like you could write a book about all the stuff that has happened in that apartment.
King: Yes, there's been a lot and those occurrences in that apartment are what made me go to the library and borrow all these books on the occult and critical essays on the occult and the Satanic bible and learn about all those philosophies.
GASP: That brings up another of my questions, are you still a member of the Church of Satan?
King: Well, I am not in contact with them now but when Anton LaVey was alive I had his private direct phone line and I met with him at the Church and entered the ritual chamber that had been shut down for years and met with him for a few hours and had great discussions with him about the philosophy of the CoS. He dispelled the mysteriousness of it and informed me of his philosophies and it was amazing because he just kept telling these stories and I just kept sitting there nodding my head. I will never forget it! He started playing the organ and sang something like "Wonderful wonderful world it is" and he turned around with that face of his. (laughs)
GASP: (laughs) It sounds like you really got to know him.
King: You know it.
(At this time Vince from Metal Blade cuts in telling King he only has 2 more minutes)
GASP: Well, they're going to cut us off soon so I better wrap this up. It sounds like you'd be willing to talk for an hour.
King: It absolutely wouldn't be a problem, it's been great.
GASP: Well I hope you're feeling better soon so we can get you back on tour and back here in Worcester. How is your herniated disc by they way?
King: It's better but it's not good and it's not going backwards you know. One step up and another half way down but it's going upwards. I just can't sit well on a chair.
GASP: I know, so many people I know including my best friend and my mom had the same problem at the same time you developed it and from what I hear it's the most painful thing ever.
 King: Yes, and there's no pain in the world quite like it so I can vouch for that. And I'm not taking any painkillers so I can be aware of how I'm moving and sitting so I don't damage it any further.
GASP: Well I hope you have a speedy recovery and I'm looking forward to seeing you play, it's been almost three years since I saw you at the NE Metal Fest here in Worcester.
King: Yeah, it's frustrating because I can' t wait to get out there and tour for the new album.
GASP: Well, I'll let you get to your next interview.
King: Well Matt it was very interesting talking with you and very nice to hear those things and it was very, very cool.
GASP: Yes, it was very cool talking to you also, thanks. I have to ask one more quick question. Are you going to be doing any more voices for episodes of Metalocalypse?
King: I haven't heard anything, no.
GASP: Okay, because that is one of the coolest shows ever, I love it!
King: It is very cool and it was a very cool experience. And watch out for the "Give Me Your Soul" video.
GASP: I will, thanks King.
King: You're welcome!
GASP: And we'll see you when you come back around.
King: All right Matt, take care!
GASP: Bye!
See ya soon - I hope!
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