I remember a few years back when I saw
King Diamond live on the
House of God tour. I remember this as a fantastic concert with King giving everything of himself with a great band behind him and an amazing show to back up the music. I remember how amazing it was to see King live on stage after so many years of listening to his albums. But so far there hasn't really been any ways to hear him live on cd. I mean, the old Abigail live cd from 1987 was okay when you just wanted to hear what he was like live, but the sound quality wasn't really that good and it was very much a live album with plenty of mistakes and improvisations.
But now King has finally released another live cd.
Deadly Lullabyes - Live is a double live cd which covers the
The Puppet Master tour, meaning that there is both songs from
Abigail II and
The Puppet Master on it since there was no tour to support
Abigail II. So the first cd is mostly about Abigail, both the first and the second part while the second cd mostly is about
The Puppet Master.
To review this cd I found the old
King Diamond in Concert 1987 - Abigail cd on my shelf, dusted it off (haven't heard this one for ages...) and listened to it. There are a few songs that are on both cds. The intro to
Abigail opens up both live cds and
No Presents for Christmas is also last track on each of them. The first thing you notice when the show really starts with
A Mansion in the Darkness, is the close to perfect sound quality. Both guitars are crystal clear, the bass solid beneath them and the drums are clear in the picture without taking up too much space. And luckily, the 80's reverb on everything is gone now, compared to the old one. King's voice must be a chapter for itself in all books about metal. I don't know how old the guy is, but his voice is as strong as ever and he has no problems at all to do his falsetto singing, even the stuff that goes all the way into the stratosphere. The vocals on the cd are very clear in the picture. All of Kings different voices come beautifully through to the listener.
Guitarists Mike Wead and Andy La Rocque turn out to be a perfect match. I know that some people would have preferred a more rock-and-roll guitarist to complement the virtous Andy but for me it doesn't get much better than these two. The cd has been mixed so that Andy is only in the right speaker while Mike is in the left one. This way you can easily hear who is soloing now and who is playing rythm guitar. This makes it easy to catch the differences in style between the two players. I also like that they actually change to acoustic guitars for the quiet parts of the songs. This gives the cd an even bigger variation. I can go on talking about these two guitarists for a long, long time. On the
Abigail live cd, they were just playing around which in the end made it sound kind of sloppy, but on this one, they have grown up. Here they play about as tight as on the
Puppet Master cd. If for nothing else, then buy this cd to hear how guitarists are supposed to play live.
The setlist here is pretty good. I mean, with so many cds out, King would have to put out a 5-double live cd to please everyone. There are a few songs here I would definitely have traded for some other songs, but songs like
Eye of the Witch and
Burn from
The Eye, all the songs from
Abigail, the last song
No Presents for Christmas and all the songs from
The Puppet Master are fantastic. I could have lived without songs like
Spare This Life,
Mansion in Sorrow and
Spirits from
Abigail II and would probably have chosen another song from
The Puppet Master than
Blood to Walk. But I guess it's difficult to make everybody happy.
This is without a doubt one of the best live cds I have ever heard. The sound is just as good as on
The Puppet Master, the musicians play
tight as hell, the setlist is great and King sings as good as ever. And they even have the female singer
Livia Zita from
The Puppet Master on stage too. If you are a
King Diamond fan, this is the live cd you have been waiting for, so run out and buy it. I hope that King will record a live DVD on his next tour, so that I can relive his show again and again forever and ever and ever... or at least for some years.
Written by
Tajs Wednesday, November 10, 2004
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