King Diamond

I love King Diamond and especially Mercyful Fate, but serious not for the Prog Archives IMO, 

Sure, you can have mine 

I know the albums you mentioned, as well as his work with Merciful Fate. The concept albums are great, but at the same time they are plain 80s heavy metal. As good as they are, they're not food for the archives...

I'm very familiar with both Mercyful Fate and KD's solo work.I think his early albums,especially Abigail and Them,ALMOST qualify as "proto prog metal",but don't really think he warrants inclusion here.

I think not, King Diamond is a good Black Metal performer, but nothing more, his theatrics and make ups have been copied from Alice Cooper and Kiss (Gene Simmons was almost ready to sue him but sent a letter so King Diamond changed his make up).

For clarity, neither King Diamond nor Mercyful Fate are black metal, despite occult lyrical themes (compare with genuine black metal artists of that era, e.g., Bathory and Celtic Frost), rather they are best described as Power Metal (although one could make a case that Mercyful Fate is prog metal).

WinterLight wrote: For clarity, neither King Diamond nor Mercyful Fate are black metal, despite occult lyrical themes (compare with genuine black metal artists of that era, e.g., Bathory and Celtic Frost), rather they are best described as Power Metal (although one could make a case that Mercyful Fate is prog metal).

WinterLight wrote: It's not difficult to distinguish amongst these, though.  Black metal features blastbeats, tremolo picking, raspy vocals, and trebly production; death metal also uses blastbeats (occasionally) and tremolo picking (again, occasionally), but tends to have downtuned guitars (at least to C#, but sometimes to B or even lower), deep, guttural vocals, and "heavy" production; power metal is very melodic and accessible, almost as if the glam bands of the eighties could actually play well.

don't be silly, BM isn't limited to one distinct sound, that which you describe is of the Northern variety (which by the mid 90s became the more popular and dominant style of BM therefor what most people associate as BM these days), but in truth you have many more bands like Rotting Christ, Varathron, Blasphemy, Mystifier, Sarcofago, Hellhammer, Venom, etc all very much BM....and while in retrospect Mercyful Fate might not be considered so much a BM band now-but back then Mercyful Fate was given the BM tag with frequency (I was around then, and pretty much grew up with the BM music) and as for Mercyful Fate's influence on BM, well just ask a band like Mortuary Drape who their #1 influence was, and for my money Mortuary Drape(another band not of the Northern style) has much more claim to BM than the zillions of Darkclones out there,


Edited by mithrandir - June 29 2008 at 03:15

Ivan_Melgar_M wrote: Good Lord...I'll stay away, thoise names really scare the sh!t out of me. Iván

Intristing option to "let him in" in PA. Anyway i'm a fan of King Diamond, his unique manner of interpretation of music but i don't think he is progressive or something releated to this. Is more theatrical heavy metal. Albums like Abigail, Them, Conspiracy and The eye are stunnind examples of profesionalism and among the best albums ever created. Great musicianship al the way. Now maybe because some of his albums are conceptual but does not mean he is progressive, his music is much more complex than the average hevy metal bands but not progressibe. At least is what i think, so the answer is no, he can't enter here on Pa no matter how much i like what he plays.