The “vampire” will return this fall when Mercyful Fate frontman and shock rocker extraordinaire King Diamond brings his solo show to North America for a post-Halloween tour. A teaser for the trek shows a hand clawing from the darkness inside an insane asylum, a quick glimpse of the singer’s famed mic-stand — a cross made out of human bones — and a woman wearing a metal mask. Eerie piano music plays in the background as a woman warns of an approaching storm.
Although the devilish Danish singer hasn’t put out a new album since 2007, the tour will be supporting his upcoming album, The Institute. King Diamond expects to release the record next year and is teasing a new single to come out this fall.
“Watch out North America, we are coming for you this winter,” King Diamond said in a statement. “I’m very proud to bring two special and amazing guests to you. Their names are Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats, plus Idle Hands. Make an appointment now.”
King Diamond’s North American tour is set to kick off November 2nd at the Bomb Factory in Dallas, Texas and wrap December 4th at the Comerica Theatre in Phoenix, Arizona. Tickets will go on sale August 23rd at 10 a.m. local time.
“As the long nights draw in and the temperatures drop, I can’t think of a better artist to creep around North America with than the legendary King Diamond,” Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats said in an unusual collective statement. “You’ll all be in for a treat. … See you there!”
In other King Diamond news, the singer will front a Mercyful Fate reunion in Europe next year with a debut appearance at the Copenhell Festival in Copenhagen next June. The set list, the band said, would consist only of songs off their early Eighties releases. The lineup notably features Armored Saint bassist Joey Vera filling in for Timi Hansen, who is battling cancer, according to Blabbermouth.
In a 2014 Rolling Stone interview, King Diamond recalled how in Mercyful Fate’s early days, the effects were do-it-yourself. “I am actually a trained lab assistant,” he said. “I used to borrow oxygen and magnesium powder to make flash pots at home, and I would experiment with very small portions of explosives, trying get this little mushroom cloud coming up in my home.”
Metallica drummer and fellow Dane Lars Ulrich picked Mercyful Fate’s Melissa as one of his favorite heavy metal albums of all time in an interview last year with Rolling Stone. In it, he also recalled what their shows were like in the early Eighties. “Their concerts were crazy,” he said. “King Diamond would, like, recite the Lord’s Prayer backwards before a song, and for one of the songs, they would have some goose feathers and do all of this ritualistic stuff, which King Diamond was super passionate about it. He’s a super cool guy. You know, we were just really into the music. It was just so fresh and so original and we loved those guys. They were really, really like brothers-in-arms for many years.”
King Diamond tour dates:
November 2 – Dallas, TX @ Bomb Factory
November 4 – Atlanta, GA @ Tabernacle
November 5 – Orlando, FL @ Dr. Phillips Center
November 7 – Brooklyn, NY @ Kings Theatre
November 8 – Worcester, MA @ The Palladium
November 10 – Philadelphia, PA @ The Tower Theater
November 11 – Baltimore, MD @ The Lyric
November 12 – Montreal, QC @ M-Telus
November 14 – Detroit, MI @ The Fillmore
November 15 – Cleveland, OH @ The Agora Theatre
November 16 – Louisville, KY @ The Palace Theatre
November 18 – Chicago, IL @ The Riviera
November 19 – Minneapolis, MN @ Palace Theater
November 22 – Denver, CO @ The Fillmore
November 23 – Salt Lake City, UT @ The Complex
November 25 – Seattle, WA @ The Paramount
November 26 – Portland, OR @ The Schnitzer
November 27 – Vancouver, BC @ The Queen Elizabeth
November 29 – San Francisco, CA @ The Warfield
December 1 – Los Angeles, CA @ The Wiltern
December 2 – San Diego, CA @ Magnolia
December 3 – Anaheim, CA @ The Grove Of Anaheim
December 4 – Phoenix, AZ @ Comerica
