Metal Reviews

Psychotic Waltz has been absent from listening time, extensively, and so it is time to reacquaint myself with this superb group of musicians, presently.

Equally prolonged periods of time in which the progressive masters had left playtime.

Night's lighter shade, with tempered pessimism.

As impressive as ever, glad I got to see them when I did. Darkside is a beast.

The theater's youthful musings certainly had a charm and a delicacy that in no other recording thereafter was ever reawakened with it again.

The evidentiary bases for a communicable and an incommunicable universe.

Was


The musicianship in early King Diamond was unparalleled and not because they were writing 10 minute songs, but because they were applying themselves, to the core of what made heavy music, worthwhile, and captivating. The captivity of melodies, the fluidity of the drum-work, which was never repetitive, but kept variety, even when one thought, it was merely, mid-paced. And then, there was the King himself, with his no-one-to-equal unmistakable voice, that made any other metal vocalist seem, secondary, and an aftertaste. The sound produced, in these early days, or rather what was the peak of King Diamond, remains classically-infused, and theatrically provocative, without any kind of unnaturalness, or pretended importance.