The year was 1987. I was 13 years old living in a suburb of St. Louis, and that’s the first time I remember hearing King Diamond. Headbanger’s Ball had debuted the video for the song “The Family Ghost” from his first concept album, the epic masterpiece Abigail. I was hooked and ran straight to the record store to buy this record.
There was only one problem—my parents wouldn’t let me listen to this type of music thanks to the PRMC (Parents Music Resource Center) and their “Filthy Fifteen.” Led by Tipper Gore at the time, this list would come to force music companies to add Parental Advisory stickers to records they found objectionable.
This tactic would end up backfiring big time. We would all find out very quickly that when you tell someone not to buy or listen to a band because they are “controversial,” it very often leads to curiosity and ultimately a ton of record sales. My friends and I would go to record stores back then looking for Parental Advisory stickers as a seal of approval. We would seek out he most evil-looking record covers we could find that we knew would piss off our parents. However, there was another problem—with this new Parental Advisory label you had to be 18 to purchase these records. But, I found a record store that wasn’t checking IDs, so that’s where we shopped—crazy to think about having to do this now, right?
Anyway, I bought a couple of King Diamond records and made it past the clerk, but now I had to get them into my house and past my parents. I had an idea that I thought was pretty clever at the time. In addition to purchasing death metal selections, I would also purchase something very safe, for example Europe’s The Final Countdown (with no Parental Advisory sticker at all). I would stuff the two Kind Diamond cassette tapes deep into my pockets and when I got home show my parents that I bought Europe. They actually thought that I was really into Europe, and they were OK with that.
Meanwhile my friends and I tossed Europe in the trash and rocked out to the King while playing Nintendo all day long. It all worked out in the end, but it was quickly becoming quite expensive as a teenager to scale my death metal music collection.
Fast forward 25 years or so to last week here in San Francisco at the Warfield Theater where I had the chance to see the King in person performing live. I have waited more than a quarter of a century to see this metal god in concert and it was well worth it. If you are not familiar with the Grammy Award nominated King Diamond, he’s known for his extensive vocal range, in particular his falsetto. How this guy has been able to keep this range for thirty years now is beyond me, but he was hitting every single note, pretty much making it look effortless.
On stage, King Diamond uses a microphone handle consisting of a femur bone and a tibia bone in the shape of a cross. His extravagant stage theatrics and baroque concept albums come to life behind an iron gate that makes it look like you are in the middle of a haunted medieval castle being overrun by metal heads. The guitar team of Andy LaRoque and Mike Wead were a constant attack of dueling solos and classic metal riffs borne from hell.
The setlist pulled from his most iconic releases such as “Abagail,” “Fatal Portrait,” “Them,” and “Conspiracy.” As an added bonus, the King paid tribute to his roots with a couple of Mercyful Fate classics back to back, “Evil” and “Come to the Sabbath.
Bottom line: epic show from a truly legendary metal god. King Diamond sounds better than ever and his live show is one for the ages. Don’t miss this one folks. Check out hi-res photos in the gallery.
