King Diamond Offers Mercyful Fate Album Update: “It’s Very Back to Basics”

Legendary vocalist King Diamond recently went on The Electric Theater With Clown, an internet show hosted by none other than Slipknot‘s Clown, to discuss a variety of topics, including the new albums he’s working on from both King Diamond and Mercyful Fate (h/t Blabbermouth).

“There’s a lot in the works right now. I’m writing with Hank [Shermann, guitar] for Mercyful Fate and writing with Andy [La Rocque, guitar] for King Diamond and writing on my own for King Diamond. For King Diamond, it’s an album that’s gonna be called ‘The Institute’, which is part one of two; there’ll be two full albums that will be completing that full story. As the title says, it’s gonna be some creepy, weird stuff. And for Mercy, I also have the title, but I’m not giving it out to anybody at the moment. We have the front cover for the new Mercy too. It’s very correct, very right for Mercyful Fate. It’s very back to basics.

“For my part with both Mercy and King Diamond — even more King Diamond, I would say — all vocals are gonna be lead vocals again, like they were in the old days for me,” he explained. “It didn’t matter if it was a choir singing on the right or the left side or whatever; they would still go in and pick up parts of the lyrics to progress the story and so on. So it’s gonna be anything goes with the vocals, for sure — back to the old style. And for Mercy too; it’s gonna be very old-fashioned. Hank is writing very much like the old days. And it’s nice to feel that we can capture that again.

“So that’s the two albums that are being worked on, that will be done by the time we go out on tour again, I’m sure.”

If you were at the most recent Mercyful Fate tour, you know that King Diamond still has plenty of gas left in the tank and his pipes aren’t hurting, so everyone at MetalSucks is very excited to hear what the King does next.