KING DIAMOND's Long-Awaited New Album To Arrive In Late 2025

KING DIAMOND guitarist Andy La Rocque and bassist Pontus Egberg spoke to Jimmy Kay of The Metal Voice about the two new songs — "Spider Lilly" and "Electro Therapy" — the band is performing on its current North American headlining tour. The "Saint Lucifer's Hospital 1920" trek, which launched on October 15 at Boeing Center at Tech Port in San Antonio, Texas, will run through December 6 in Dallas, Texas. Support is coming from OVERKILL and NIGHT DEMON. Additional backing vocals for the KING DIAMOND set are provided by the special guest Myrkur.

Regarding "Spider Lilly", Andy said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "That idea came up from King [Diamond, KING DIAMOND singer and namesake]. I don't know exactly when, but he's been working on it quite a while. And I think the lyrics for it got done just like a few days before the tour started, actually. And he sent me the basics of the song just a few days, like a week prior to the tour start, I believe. So we had to learn it real fast, record it, because we knew that we were gonna shoot it on video, too. So that's the newest song we have right now that we actually play live. And 'Spider Lilly' is a mean girl. She can also be good. We'll see. It's gonna change a little bit, I believe. It's a character, part of the story that King is working on right now."

Asked if King had been sitting on the "Spider Lilly" musical idea for quite a while, Andy said: "No. I don't really think so. I mean, he had some ideas, but how much she had and how long, I don't really know. I just know that we realized the ideas very shortly before we actually started the tour."

Pontus chimed in: "Like Andy said, we only heard the rough demo of this song a week before we headed over to the States and quickly had to learn it and record it too. And now I think it's been mixed."

Andy added: "It's gonna be released as a video single and a single. I don't know when exactly. But we have other songs in the loop too. King has a lot of ideas and I have a lot of songs that's kind of in the demo stage done or finished."

Asked if the new KING DIAMOND album is already completed, Andy said: "No, it's not. We're still working on it. And as soon as we get back from tour, we're gonna have a little Christmas break and then we're gonna pick it up again. So the plan is to have everything done this spring, and it will be released shortly after the European summer festival tour and all that. That's the plan we have."

On the topic of the inception of "Electro Therapy", La Rocque said: "It's been around for — let's see here — a couple of years, actually. I think I wrote it, I think I wrote the start riffs on the tour back in '19, even. And there's been some changes to it back and forth, especially on the verse, trying to find the right key for King to sing on and all that stuff. And I think what we have now is probably the final version, and it's gonna end up on the album too. King is still working on some fine-tuning on the lyrics; you will hear that tonight."

KING DIAMOND 2024 touring lineup:

Andy La Rocque - guitar
Mike Wead - guitar
Pontus Egberg - bass
Matt Thompson - drums
Myrkur - additional backing vocals, keyboards

Titled "The Institute", KING DIAMOND's first studio LP in 18 years is tentatively due in 2025 via Metal Blade. It will be made available as a two-LP horror concept story, with the second part arriving at a later date.

In October 2023, KING DIAMOND released a music video for the 2019 single "Masquerade Of Madness". The clip was directed by David Brodsky and Allison Woest of MyGoodEye Visuals.

At the time of the video's release, King commented: "'Masquerade Of Madness' was released digitally in 2019 before our North American tour. During rehearsals, we took one full day to film 'Masquerade Of Madness' with David Brodsky and Allison Woest. We spent all day and all night recording while performing the song with our full tour stage show choreography. After the tour, Covid happened.

"The video was all but forgotten as the world came to a standstill — we never saw a single frame from all the footage. Years later, as things began to pick up and writing began for both new MERCYFUL FATE and KING DIAMOND records, we wondered, what happened to that video from four years ago? So we decided to check in with David Brodsky and a couple of weeks later, we had the first cut of the video.

"I was speechless! I had nothing to criticize and after just a few notes from Andy La Rocque, the video for 'Masquerade Of Madness' was finished! There's so much mood and black and white is used in a perfect way with Jodi's performances. The visuals fit the music flawlessly and this is now among my favorite KING DIAMOND videos along with 'Sleepless Nights' and 'Welcome Home' — and not to forget of course, our double live DVD."

A month after KING DIAMOND released "Masquerade Of Madness" in November 2019, La Rocque told The Metal Voice that he came up with the music for the track first before passing it off to King, who "needed to arrange a few things and change just a small few things for making it work with his vocals. And then, of course, he wrote the lyrics for it," the guitarist revealed. "So we [went] a little back and forth until he felt like, 'Okay, this is cool, man. This is the right key to sing in,' and all that."

At the 2022 Bloodstock Open Air festival at Catton Park, Walton-on-Trent, United Kingdom, King spoke to Bloodstock TV's Oran O'Beirne about his plans for "The Institute". "Something with KING DIAMOND, we have a very special thing [planned] for that album," King said. "It's gonna be a two-album story. But KING DIAMOND, we are building something that you will never have seen on a stage before — not that way. And with the light guy, he's never done it that way either. … It's very different, very sick. You will not have seen musicians standing on stage in that type of light. It's gonna be very dark. They have to learn to play in dark areas. It's crazy. I know that our light guy, he can't wait for us to do it. I showed him some pictures that have the kind of feelings I want, the kind of backdrops I want, stuff like that. … This is gonna blow people's minds when they see it, I am a hundred percent sure."

La Rocque, whose real name is Anders Allhage, discussed his vision for the new KING DIAMOND album with The Metal Voice, saying that it will be filled with great "melodies, of course. Super important. Without melodies, there is no music," he explained. "I'm also envisioning a more organic sound of the album. If you look back to the older albums, when Mikkey [Dee] played [drums for the band], for example, it's, like, a little bit up and down in tempo, and that makes it dynamic and also organic. So that's one thing that I would like to hear on the next album, for sure. But building up a dynamic, kind of organic feel, the drummer is a really important thing here, of course. And I know that Matt Thompson [current KING DIAMOND drummer] is the right guy to do this, for sure."

In March 2019, King told Full Metal Jackie's nationally syndicated radio show that the next album from his namesake band will be "absolutely gruesome" with a story set in a 1920s mental institution. "I chose that because I think it's a very creepy scenario," he explained. "And some of the things that go on that we're gonna show onstage is also things that certainly was going on back then, when medicine was beginning to take a beneficial turn in history and actually being able to help human beings live longer. But there was some experimentation going on, too, that was absolutely gruesome. Some of that is involved in the story, but it's something totally different. Once you get to the second part of the story, you will begin to suddenly understand that, 'What the hell is going on here? What is this really about?' 'Cause there's a whole different story that will not come to you till second part. But in the first part, you're gonna get to know a lot people at a certain place… Some of it takes place here, this world, and some of it takes place in a parallel world. And there's a correlation between what happened to me and what happens to some people in this place and where they suddenly appear. And you will find out why they are there, how they appear there and the places down the road. I won't say too much right now, but it's gonna be very creepy."

KING DIAMOND received a Grammy nomination in the "Best Metal Performance" category for the track "Never Ending Hill" off the band's last album, 2007's "Give Me Your Soul … Please".

"Give Me Your Soul ... Please" sold 4,500 copies in the United States in its first week of release to debut at position No. 174 on The Billboard 200 chart.

KING DIAMOND released a DVD/Blu-ray, "Songs For The Dead Live", in January 2019 via Metal Blade Records. The set captures 1987's seminal "Abigail" album in its entirety, twice, and in very different locales: Belgium's Graspop Metal Meeting in June 2016 and Philadelphia's Fillmore in November 2015. The performances feature KING DIAMOND's current band, comprising of guitarists La Rocque and Mike Wead, bassist Pontus Egberg and Matt Thompson.

Photo courtesy of Palmer Turner Overdrive for Metal Blade Records