When it comes to classic heavy metal, Mercyful Fate has produced some of the best and most original music to date and, best of all, they are still at it.  Still touring and still recording great music at a pace that would have burned out most people long ago.  Taking the darkest elements from Black Sabbath and mixing them with the complexity and heaviness of old Judas Priest, the band was the first to seriously explore the subject of Satanism within the metal community.  After the band split in 1984, vocalist King Diamond built a very successful solo career before re-uniting the band in the early 90s.  Since then, Mercyful Fate has released five full-length albums, including the brand-new 9.

King Diamond, the man behind the face-paint and stylized falsettos, is as busy as ever, but was more than happy to let me in on some of his thoughts over the phone recently…

What is the concept behind the title 9 and the cover artwork?

Well, the obvious meaning behind the title is that this is the ninth full-length album that we have out.  The number nine we used more with King Diamond in the past.  Whatever you multiply nine by, if you add up all the numbers, you always come back to nine.  In life, in human terms, a pregnancy takes nine months.  And nine multiplied by 74 is 666, if you want to take it further.  6 + 6 + 6 is 18, where 1 + 8 is nine.  You always come back to nine no matter what you multiply it by, so that's just some of the reasons for the title.

And the cover was done by the guy who did the first two Mercyful Fate albums.  It was a partnership between this guy, Thomas Holm, and another guy, Torbjörn Jörgensen, who took over.  They had a partnership and Thomas was the one painting, while Torbjörn was doing more like airbrush stuff.  When we started doing King Diamond, it was Torbjörn that started doing the covers and he did most of the King Diamond covers.  But we got in touch with Thomas again, I don't remember how…one of the other guys ran into him and got talking about maybe doing some shit for us again.  So he basically took those two covers and blended them together.  The skull itself looks is the Melissa skull, just from another angle - same type of horns and the chrome skull, then the hands are like the Don't Break the Oath style hands. 

That is actually very fitting, to me, because I feel that if we had continued at that time, this should have been the third album.  There's a lot more aggression, a lot more attitude than we have had in a long time.  More in the old way, where we don't hold back anything and say it like it is.  It's in the direction of those earlier albums, but with new aspects - new ideas that we have never touched on before.  We have detuned on a couple of songs on this album, which we've never really done before.  "The Church of St. Anne" has that tuning and it sounds very Sabbath-like when it starts, but when the voice come sin, it's obvious that it is Mercyful Fate.  The same for "The Grave," it is also a detuned song. 

So, there are new things added to the whole picture, which there should be.  It would be nice to have some progression always and a song like "Sold My Soul," for instance, is very different from what we've done before but it is no doubt Mercyful Fate.  That's a song that is based very much around the vocals - I don't think I've ever had so many vocals on a song before.  It's full of harmony choir, which is another thing we used to do a lot in the early days - there is more of that style of vocals on here, where you go from the raw, very brutal pieces to the harmonized, very melodic pieces.  That is one of the reasons that most people who have heard this album connect it, more than any of the others since the break-up, to the earlier albums.  It has the up-tempo, double-kick stuff, it has the real heavy songs, so you get that rawness in there and at the same time you have a lot of melody.  We did that a lot in the early days, where you'd go from a very powerful piece straight into a very melodic piece and it's hard to get that blend right.  We always write without thinking about that kind of stuff.  We don't sit and analyze it - it has to come from inside.

After so many albums, do you find it is harder or easier to write songs now?

Ummm…..  To me, it's the same really.  I love what we do so much still and that inspires you.  Give me some music in that style and I'll be inspired to write something for it.  I love creating.  Working on these cool harmony parts, that's really fun for me.  Most of [recording] is tough work, because you stand there in the same spot for six hours and sing and sing and sing to get it exactly right.  It's not a matter of not being in tune or getting the pitch right, because I don't have a problem in those areas.  But the music is written and you hear it in the demo version, you get a lot of ideas and write lyrics and have the melody lines in your head.  Then you go in the studio and it's recorded for real:  real drums, real guitar and bass, and the sound picture changes from what you heard on the demo and you get a different feeling.  Sometimes, everything you had planned at home works 100%, but sometimes it only works 75% because you get another feeling for it - you know, 'This part need to be more melodic,' or, 'This needs to be more aggressive.'  The reason it takes time is you want to get the right feel out of it and you can sing the same line in so many different ways.  It can be completely in tune and right and there's nothing wrong with it, but if I don't get the right feel out of it, then it's not right to me, even though it could sound right to everyone else.

Could you explain some of the lyrics on 9?

Yeah, there are a lot of different situations that we're touching on.  Very much back to the "gloves off" thing this time, really in your face.  I would have written it in the early days - don't hold back or try to describe something with different words because you don't want to be misunderstood.  As always with Mercyful Fate, they are quite religious oriented, or spiritually-oriented, in contrast to the King Diamond stuff which is more like life philosophy-oriented with the occult added to it.  King Diamond is more concerned with how we act and interact with each other and Mercyful Fate is more thinking about the spiritual side of life.  And we'll never say, 'this is right and this wrong,' or, 'do this and do that,' because it is nobody's business to tell other people, but I like to raise questions about things.  I might have something that I think is important and want people to think about it and make up their minds.  That's the way I've always approached writing lyrics for Mercyful Fate.  We are individuals - we all see things differently.  One person may think it's right to grab a disabled parking space because it's only two minutes and no one will probably park there anyway, and others will say you don't do that no matter what.  Wrong and right is so individual from person to person and that is something I've learned in my life philosophy, that people are different and to respect that. 

I've always had respect for religions and respect that people have different opinions than I have.  The whole idea behind having laws in a country is because it is a bunch of individuals who have different thoughts about things, but someone has to give a guideline to try and make people get along.  To give you one example, the King Diamond album Voodoo talked a lot about that.  This family moves into a house and one night they start hearing these voodoo drums, so they know that something is going on and it is related to voodoo.  They've heard about it and don't know what it is, but it scares them and they want to get rid of it.  They try to drive it away and they do it out of a good meaning because they want their kid to grow up in the best circumstances.  So suddenly you have a full-blown war between the two.  And what could have happened is the family could have taken some time, done a little research and they would have found out that those voodoo people were not there to harm them at all - they would never harm them.  But they didn't know that and they didn't bother to examine their fears and that resulted in the war between them.  You can relate it to a lot of things, like Kosovo for instance.  Two territories close to each other, they live their lives in different ways, they believe in different ways, but if you try to understand that, 'Okay, these other people are different than us and they want to live their lives in that territory that way.  Let's find out what it is they do and why the do it,' and then you would probably find out that they're not a threat.  They're not going to attack us because they are different or live in a different way.  But instead they attack first and try to force their way, and that's how humanity is most of the time - we don't respect each other as individuals.

Do you think that is something that will ever change, that we may someday evolve beyond?

I don't think so.  Maybe one day when the Big Bang comes…  That's the amazing thing about human beings - there are so many of us and every single one of those that are here has a huge world of their own.  Every day you get up and through your eyes you see a lot of things, know certain people that I have no knowledge of, you go to work, you drive your car, you know these places - you have your entire world on your own and I have mine and to think that every single person in the world has that blows my mind.  It is so huge, the level of information and feelings that is being experienced in this world every day.  And if a person doesn't want to do this or do that, they have a reason for it.  Whatever that reason is, I don't have to know.  They don't have to explain why they don't want to go to a race or a football game or whatever - that is something they don't like and I respect that.  I mean, you should have arguments, that is healthy, but there is a certain level where you stop.

Within a day or two of the recent school shooting in Colorado, people were pointing fingers at various musical groups as being responsible for driving these kids over the edge.  Why do you think it is always music that gets blamed?

After this incident, I was just waiting for it and, sure enough, it started.  First of all, there are insane people in this world and there's a lot more than we know of.  We don't know until they do something that we categorize as insane.  People are born with a sick mind, but it doesn't show until they do something with that mind that is outrageous to the rest of the people.  It can happen when you're 42 or 45, or it can happen when you're 12 or 13.  There are some people you just can't help.  You wish you could, but you can't.  And then you start thinking, 'Well, what triggers that insane mind?'  Anything!  Nobody knows.  You can research what triggers it but we sure haven't found out yet because it keeps happening, so nobody has the answer to that.  But to just start blaming music is idiocy.  There are so many things that influence kids and everybody.  What about all the other kids who listen to the same music?  So what do they want to do - ban all music and all movies because they might possibly trigger someone's sick mind?  Then they'll just be triggered by something else.  Maybe they don't get their corn flakes one morning or something and that triggers them.  Nobody knows what it is and it is so pathetic to start pointing fingers at music. 

The worst experience you have in your everyday life is when you turn on the news, which we all do.  Because there, right at dinner time, the kids are not sleeping, right into your living room - Kosovo mass slaughter, war, torture, crime - you see it all right there.  And it's not like people watching the news are running out and killing each other - it doesn't happen.  And that is reality.  There is one thing that might be part of the reason for those kids doing that is the parents.  I really think that a lot of parents today are not paying enough attention, are not participating in their children's lives.  It's not enough to say, 'Don't listen to that, it's bad!' or, 'Don't watch that movie!  I forbid it!'  That's probably the worst you can do because you take something away from that one kid that the others have.  Watch the movie with them, talk about what was so cool about it.  Or go to a concert with them, figure out what is going on.  Then they will realize it is an escape from reality, kind of like what they do when they come home from work.  They want to do something that is not associated with work, to relax, and kids do the same thing.  Too many people don't do that, instead they will forbid their kid to go see this person or that person because they dress weird or listen to this music or whatever.  And where does the kid end up?  They'll go somewhere else to meet these kids and then they start agreeing to meet on the street corner where the drug dealers are and suddenly they get into a much worse scenario. 

Getting back to the Colorado incident, I guess there was a shotgun lying around the house and all this [explosives] stuff lying around the garage…and no one sees this?  You've got to have extremely bad eyesight or you just don't care.  It's that thing of not participating in your kid's life.  You can just picture a situation like that where the kid is like, 'Hey, I had a bad day at school,' and the parent is like, 'Can't you see I'm busy?  I'm reading the newspaper.  We'll talk about that at dinner or Sunday or whatever, I don't have time now.'  So the kid just keeps it inside of him.  You can almost hear these kinds of conversations going on.  But not a question about, 'What is all that shit in the garage?  Probably something my wife brought in because I don't talk to her either.'

I think it is partly an American thing, too.  People here just don't want to take responsibility.

That's it.  If you bring a kid into this world, you better live up to that responsibility because it is a big responsibility.  If you don't have the time to be part of their life and understand their life and help them a little, then there's a good chance the kid will screw up at some point.  It might not be as bad as the Colorado shooting, but it could be like stealing a car or other crime or getting into drugs.  I know for a fact that if I had a kid I would definitely take the time to be part of their life because I know what a responsibility it is.  My brother has kids and you've gotta be there, gotta be ready to spend that time to experience what they are experiencing.

Getting back to your work, I was wondering if you had ever written any short stories or a novel?

Nope, but I would love to.  It's just the time factor.  I get some of it out in the King Diamond albums, by doing these concept albums, but it's very far from a book.  But it at least has a sequence of events and interaction between characters.  Doing two bands pretty much takes up all my time.  You're in the studio or on the road or doing interviews or preparing for this or that, and I'm also involved a lot with the business side, too.

Have you ever written any music that falls outside of the King Diamond or Mercyful Fate boundaries?

No, actually I haven't.  Anything I write comes from the inside and that has always been the case.  I don't plan out what kinds of songs I would like to write.  Some days I'll just sit with a guitar, while others I might just fool around with the drum machine actually and create some cool beats, then put guitar over that and suddenly some ideas come out.  Only a third of it might be worth it, but you can work on it from there.  Sometimes I will just turn the keyboard on and play with the harpsichord sound because I like the sound of it and that might turn into a song as well.  It might not turn into a real metal song, but sometimes it does once you add all the other things to it.  When I do play with the harpsichord, there is usually no intention of writing a Mercyful Fate song, because we don't generally use keyboards.  There is one church organ on this new album, on "The Church of St. Anne," but that is just to underline a feeling.  But with King Diamond [the band], anything goes.  When I first start writing a song, I don't know where it belongs.  Maybe halfway through I'll go, 'Okay, this is definitely going to be a Mercyful Fate song,' and from then on it gets a little more streamlined, one direction or the other.

After accomplishing so much and recording so many albums, is there anything artistically that you haven't achieved yet that you have always wanted to?

There's lots of things.  I still don't feel like we've done the perfect album and probably never will.  I would love to be involved in movies, soundtracks, things like that.  I'd love to have the chance to write the music for a horror movie.  I would also someday, like you said, write a novel and go really deep into the characters, the way I can't on an album.  It would demand that the music slows down a little, I guess.

That would be really cool because with a lot of the concept albums you've done - the stories seem very real, but you just wish there was more to them, that they were fleshed out more.

Exactly.  In a book or a movie, you could really get to see the characters and know what they are doing.  But also, you say it seems real - it is very real.  Maybe not the very story you read right there line-by-line, but in-between the lines, the story behind the story, was very real.  Abigail was totally inspired by something my mother told me about her mother, and that was that my mother was literally left at somebody's doorstep.  My grandmother was employed at a rich professor's house as a servant in Denmark, a long time ago of course.  And the professor's son got my grandmother pregnant and it was like, 'Oh, a bastard - we can't have that.  It's horrible, you must send her away so she can have the kid somewhere else.  Then it's up to her - if she wants to keep it, then she has no job here.'  It's that thing about shame and different classes.  'You don't mess with the servants, you're too good for that, how could you do it?  Okay, I will fix your mistake.'  That thing about looking down on kids born outside of marriage.  She was literally left in a basket with a blanket on somebody's doorstep, who took her in.  She later found out who her mother was and actually got a half-assed relationship going with her.

My mother told me a story about one time later when my real grandmother got sick at some point, my mother left Copenhagen where we live to go where my grandmother lives and take care of her in her house for a while.  During that time, she told me one specific incident where the neighbor came over to my grandmother's house to borrow something or whatever, and my grandmother managed to answer the door.  When the neighbor said, 'Oh, who is that lovely lady staying with you these days?', my grandmother said, 'Oh, it's just an old friend.'  Still to that day, she wouldn't acknowledge in public that she had a daughter. 

So yeah, there are some real feelings behind those stories, that might be why they seem a little more real than just made-up stories.  That's also why later on the albums Them and Conspiracy, the grandmother is portrayed as such a bitch.  That goes for everything I've done, there are some deep feelings behind them.  For people who buy the albums, there should be two selections.  Either just read the lyrics and hopefully they are interesting just the way they are, but those who want to go deeper, they can really find a lot.  That is kind of a challenge to put both of those aspects in there if you can, but it is also satisfying when you feel you have succeeded in doing that.  It's probably rare you can find a musician that can say it, but I stand behind every lyric I've ever written and that goes all the way back to Mercyful Fate in the early days.