Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: King Diamond
Label: Massacre Records
Release: 2007
Rating: 4/5
You don’t find a heavy metal act every day that can boast such a strong sense of individuality in the messages it delivers as Mr. King Diamond does! We’re talking, of course, about the continuity of the classic “eighties” heavy metal tradition that King Diamond comes from. King’s new album, his twelfth already in a sparkling 25-year career, is, let me say it right off the bat, no less interesting than King’s best work. Of course, hunting for another “Abigail” (1987) or “Fatal Portrait” (1986) is a utopian exercise, but after roughly seven years of the Weed/ La Rocque guitar duo living side by side, it’s on the new album “Give Me Your Soul… Please” that the combination of the two really catches fire. It’s about as good as it gets when you talk about pairings of two equal guitarists/soloists in a band.
A few observations are worth making. On this record King Diamond spends more time in the lower registers than ever before, which pulls the album closer to the approach he used in Mercyful Fate. On top of that, the man has put together an album of songs that all shine with powerful, expressive choruses that grab you on the first listen. With their directness, punch and melody all at once, they underline that the King Diamond brand simply doesn’t know how to, can’t, and above all never manages to let either itself or its fans down. On the record it’s easy to pick up (and it blasts us right back to King’s early days) on the extraordinary attention to detail in the songs, in the choice of added guitar flourishes and in the carefully fitted-in shenanigans from both guitarists, who follow the red thread laid out by the uncompromising basic riffs. The first song is the perfect title for that. The main riff, with its chosen beat, conjures up parallels with the venom of Painkiller (Judas Priest), while the punchy, melodic “singalong” chorus is, of course, pure King. The two guitarists also manage to elevate the album in one more very important way! They’ve confirmed their excellent communication with the way they weave and build in multi-part solos. The two pick carefully where to place their improvisations, never breaking the flow of the album, but instead successfully complementing and upgrading the punch and the drama. In the sheer perfection of combining the classic elements we’re used to from King Diamond, the title track definitely stands out on the record!
You can tell a bit that the years of a long career have left their mark on King’s lively vocal cords and the rest of his throat machinery. And yet, hello? We’re talking about King Diamond. Don’t worry. The required mix of terrorizing dread is here, lurking at your every step as you make your way through the record! King once again triumphantly combines his trademark, extremely high, clean, wailing villain vocals, in the style of the death-calling fairies (Celtic: “banshee”) or a wolf howling at the moon, with raspy, lower-pitched and more direct vocal attacks that keep it grounded. On this new concept album, yet another horror story, King once again pulls off the dynamic swell of moods as if it were a joke. He doesn’t just capture it, he puts it front and center at its most heated, which was definitely the artist’s basic aim all along.
Despite all the melodiousness and the grabby melodies of these hard-hitting songs I’ve mentioned, King’s vocal delivery is, as always, the thing that makes the album harder to get into, to the point where it takes quite a while to settle in your ears. And that’s how it should be, otherwise it wouldn’t be a King Diamond album. “Give Me Your Soul…Please” is a highly compact record whose songs are completely on par in terms of expressiveness. There are no ballad lullabies, except for the closer Moving On, but the concept itself demands that of it. The new King Diamond once again serves up pure, most authentic heavy metal, sinfully sweet and, through its satanic madness, deadly at the same time, which is its basic goal too!
Despite the trademarks carried by King Diamond’s vocal delivery, there’s still a noticeable shift on the record, away from King in the spotlight and toward the body of the band itself. On “Give Me Your Soul.. Please” you can feel that the band takes precedence over the centralized figure of King Diamond, which is what we get on most King Diamond records. And that fact once again puts the comparisons with Mercyful Fate right in front of your ears and eyes.
After the rather mediocre predecessors “Abigail II”: The Revenge” (2002) and “The Puppet Master” (2003), the four-year gap leading up to the new record was extremely helpful! “Give Me your Soul… Please” is a record that breathes and beats with fiery intensity and is truly “Diamondesque”, and it’s the album the fans already have in their hearts. With it, King Diamond stays at home, right where he’s strongest. A one-of-a-kind performer, a mad genius of chilling poetry and the “Vincent Price of heavy metal” knows no mercy. Another first-rate horror story is with us, and after you listen to it, you’ll have a big lump in your throat for quite a while!
Lineup
King Diamond – vocals
Andy La Rocque – guitar
Mike Wead – guitar
Hal Patino – bass
Matt Thompson – drums
Production
King Diamond & Andy La Rocque
Tracklist
1. Dead
2. Never Ending Hill
3. Is Anybody Here?
4. Black of Night
5. Mirror Mirror
6. Cellar
7. Pictures in Red
8. Give Me Your Soul
9. Floating Head
10. Cold as Ice
11. Shapes of Black
12. Girl in the Bloody Dress
13. Moving On
Running time: 54.06
