Following triple bypass open heart surgery in 2010, King Diamond understandably had to take a break from doing what he was born to do — that is, being one of the best vocalists in the history of metal. But to the delight of fans everywhere (including this one!), last week The King announced his imminent return to stage, with two appearances at European festivals scheduled for this summer.

But, hey, guess what? Turns out we won’t hafta wait ’til June for His Majesty’s return — ’cause he gave a surprise performance at the fifth annual Nomad Recording Showcase Throwdown this past Friday night. And while the quality of the resulting cell phone footage isn’t that great, it is good enough to hear that King Diamond’s voice is as strong as ever, open heart surgery be damned. Check it out:

More footage after the jump!

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So remember last week, when King Diamond announced that he’d hired some new booking agents, and we were like, “Oh, that must mean he’s gonna tour again soon?” Well, hey, guess what? That’s EXACTLY what it meant!

The King has announced two European festival dates — June 9 at the Sweden Rock Festival in Sölvesborg, Sweden, and June 15 at  Hellfest in Clisson, France — but it’s hard for me to imagine that he won’t be announcing more shortly. It’s also hard for me to imagine that those appearances won’t be followed by touring in other parts of the world. I’m just speculating, mind you, but… again, why announce new booking agents and festival appearances if you weren’t gearing up for some major activity?

While we wait for further news, enjoy the below video of His Majesty announcing his appearance at Sweden Rock Fest and discussing his current band line-up. I always find it a little odd to see the guy without his make-up, but I gotta say, he’s looking pretty good for a man who was knocking on death’s door not all that long ago. LONG LIVE THE MOTHERFUCKING KING.

-AR

[via Metal Insider]

Well, here’s some exciting news.

When we last heard from King Diamond more than a year ago, he had just undergone triple bypass open heart surgery, and therefore understandably had to take “a break from music and the music business altogether until further notice.”

Well, presumably he’s doing much better now and is getting ready to make his big comeback, because according to a posting on His Majesty’s official website earlier this week, The King has just hired ICM’s Nick Storch to book North and South American tours for him, and Paul Ryan at The Agency Group to book his tours in the rest of the world. Which would certainly imply that he’s getting ready to hit the road again — I mean, why hire those dudes, let alone release a statement announcing their hiring, if he wasn’t gearing up for touring?

And the statement gets even teasier as it goes on: “There’ll be a lot more great news coming the next couple of weeks,” His Highness himself says. “It’s been difficult keeping everything under wraps, but soon it will all be out in the open.”

So, yeah. Nothing official, but that sounds like a tour tease if ever there was one.

Hopefully we’ll know more very, very soon. ‘Cause a King Diamond tour would be ssssswwwwweeeeetttt.

-AR

Before there were blogs there were these things called magazines, and the only metal magazine we still get excited about reading every month is Decibel. Here’s managing editor Andrew Bonazelli…

Hey everyone. Hope you had a stellar break sharing Trans Siberian Orchestra dubstep mixes/thoughtless $25 Amazon gift cards with your loved ones. If the cover of the new Decibel is any indication—Ben Falgoust rocking a gotta-shit scowl while the other three dudes in Goatwhore do their best Mona Lisa impressions—2012’s gonna be another utterly fucked-up yet strangely satisfying year.

There’s a je ne sais quoi to NOLA metal bands, something iconic about the way they present themselves that’s tough to articulate, yet immediately identifiable. Everyone wears extra black, but they do it right. Like fellow N’awlins linchpins Crowbar, Eyehategod and Down, our February cover stars are among the hardest-working, no-bullshit, most authentic extreme bands around, qualities evident in their radical fifth LP, Blood for the Master. I just hope we remember the Goat when it’s Top 40 time at the end of the year—or, since we’ll all be obliterated, that Woody Harrelson and John Cusack remember.

The February dB also features our always, uh, completely accurate Top 25 Most Anticipated Albums of the Year preview, plus features on Black Tusk, Evoken, Will Haven and King Diamond, and Autopsy’s killer inaugural flexi. It’s up to you to see who else is representing on the gauntlet tip.

-AB

You can order the February 2012 issue of Decibel here. But why not just get a full subscription to ensure that you never miss one an issue?

I frequent Tumblr every once in a while for the usual dose of cute cat antics and half-naked men. Occasionally, a hot metal (female) babe pops up on my feed. This in and of itself is not so surprising, since I actually follow Metal Babes. I have a delightful friend who is often posted there. Pictures on the Internet never stay contained though, and one particular image of her got passed around and garnered many, many notes. Mostly because she’s a pretty girl wearing a Lamb of God shirt, which automatically means she doesn’t really like the band, she’s just doing it for fashion.

Well, that’s just silly. Why would a pretty girl work to impress the most socially awkward of music fans? Yeah, stereotypes work both ways. However, it is kind of apparent that metal has become a fashion statement, and according to a recent piece on Metal Army, a really popular one.

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Welcome to “Question of the Week,” a (not really at all) weekly debate amongst the MetalSucks staff regarding a recent hot button issue.

We haven’t done one one of these all summer, but we came up with a fun one for this week:

IF YOU COULD GO BACK IN TIME AND PLAY ANY METAL BAND/MUSICIAN SOME OF THEIR MUSIC AND/OR SHOW THEM PHOTOS/VIDEOS OF THEMSELVES FROM THEIR FUTURE (OUR PRESENT), WHO WOULD IT BE AND WHY?

The MS staff’s answers after the jump.

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I’m at the point where I pretty much prefer animated movies to live-action ones. I passed up some big deal, hotshot movie that came out recently, whose name I don’t even remember, to see Rango. I’m usually a pretty good judge, too, because I knew Rango was going to be awesome ,and it was. It looks absolutely amazing, and if you’re a nerd for animation detail, the gross, crusty animals will thrill you. Not to mention the classic movie references from Chinatown to Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas. It’s also damn violent for a “kids movie.” And well, I’m a movie nerd with a deep love for filmic violence. My dad didn’t have any sons, ok? He raised me to love his Fab Four; Arnold, Bruce, Sylvester, and Jean-Claude. And Dolph, on days he felt generous.

This might be odd, but I always liked to think about what various characters’ personalities would be like. Down to their music and movie taste. I especially try to pick out the metalheads, because I want to find my animated brothers and sisters in arms. It was while musing on the subject on Twitter that I found out the talented Ms. Elise over at Reign in Blonde kind of does the same thing. Apparently, all my acquaintances are online these days. She actually compiled a list of the most metal Disney characters, and with her help, I’ve expanded the list. Here are the Ten Most Likely Metalheads in Animated Movies (excluding anime and other international releases, as the author has not done enough research on the subject.)

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After listening to Psycho’s female blowtorch, Penny Torture, and Ava Inferi’s haunting distaff elemental, Carmen Susana Simões, I realized it’s time we just chill and admit that women are all-around better at this metal-singing thing.

Is this mad exaggeration? It feels like that when I’m away from an MPEG player, but then I listen to those two radically different bands, to Psycho’s primal-scream old school death or Ava Inferi’s doomed-out, gothy whatsit, and it feels I’m not over-reaching, I’m underselling.

And it’s not just two superior releases (Ava Inferi’s Onyx and Psycho’s Pain Addict Pigs). It’s just become impossible to ignore the fact that females are not only doing equal or better work in the same genre jobs as male counterparts, they’re also making metal records that go places no male on Earth — none, nada, zip-ol-lina — could go. That 2011’s best metal so far — Subrosa’s No Help for the Mighty Ones — is an almost all-femme effort of relentless pan-genre awesomeness only adds arsenic and new lace to my argumentative cake.

All of which may have the reader thinking, “You do realize, you silly person, that you’ve just written off the work of one half the human race.”

To which I say, “Yeah, well, I guess I’m pimping a little irony here, since that’s business as usual with women and the metal press. But irony aside, please bear with me.”

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Before there were blogs there were these things called magazines, and the only metal magazine we still get excited about reading every month is Decibel. Here’s managing editor Andrew Bonazelli…

I’m selfish/insensitive enough that, when it was announced last November that King Diamond was hospitalized for triple bypass surgery, my first thought was, “Oh shit, now we’ll never get Mercyful Fate in the Hall of Fame.” You know, as opposed to, “Oh shit, I hope this human being who has entertained and captivated metal fans for over a quarter-century is okay, much less his loving family.” No, being an asshole isn’t easy. One has to work at it. Anyway, everything more or less turned out okay—not only was the great Dane discharged in December to recuperate at home, but we had already conducted two-fifths of the required interviews to make a Melissa feature a reality, King being among them. Hence, a pretty colorful, totally essential feature for April. Oh, and if you prefer King Diamond the band’s classic ghost tales, stay tuned for a very special black horseman’s arrival in a dB somewhere down the line.

Back to Melissa, though. Its induction opens up a familiar Pandora’s box. Most fans argue that—not unlike Venom’s Welcome to Hell and Black Metal—Melissa and sophomore sensation Don’t Break the Oath are equally ripping. Our contention is that Melissa has the more memorable set of tunes, and that most Oath-swearing is due to the fact that the LP afforded Mercyful Fate reams of exposure via their first U.S. tour. And not that this contributes all that much to said debate, but Decibel EIC Albert Mudrian, as big a Maiden apologist as—well, that’s not true; some of our staff writers are even more nuts—but whatever: he contends that Leyton’s finest ripped off the main riff to Fate’s “Curse of the Pharaohs” on Powerslave hit “2 Minutes to Midnight.” More food for your skull. What do you think?

-AB

You can buy the April 2011 issue of Decibel here, or just get a full subscription to ensure that you never miss an awesome Hall of Fame entry.

I like music videos. I don’t mean just lame concert footage videos either. (I get it, Band, you can play your instruments like, really well. In front of people!) No, I mean the amazing, overblown, explosions and nonsensical storylines, holy shit is that a cameo by jailbait Keri Russell in bra?!, looks like it was directed by Michael Bay, epic mini-movies. In fact, Meat Loaf’s, “I Would Do Anything for Love (But I Won’t Do That),” has pretty much all of the aforementioned, except one. I won’t say which one, just look it up*. It is the most amazing seven minutes ever.  Except for the part where he prays to the god of, “Sex, and drums, and rock’n’roll.” Come on, now, you’re not fooling anyone.

The other night I couldn’t sleep. So I ended up watching music videos until the sun came up. I did not have a good day that day. Of course, I watched metal videos. (Okay fine, like half were Meat Loaf videos. He kind of hovers on the periphery of metal, right? He was in Rocky Horror Picture Show, he played a totally awesome biker named Eddie! Isn’t his daughter married to Scott Ian? Fringes, he’s on the fringes. Shut up, Meat Loaf is awesome. Even more so when I can’t type and write “Meat Load.” Good job proof-reading at 5:40 a.m.)

Videos were my first introduction to many bands. They were like trailers for records, and the more confusing and “deep” they were, the more interested I got. I’m not saying there are no good videos anymore, but I just can’t believe we live in a time where it’s no longer cool to shred shirtless on a cliff while your bandmate gets married but then it starts raining and the bride is dead and Axl Rose is swimming with dolphins while Stephanie Seymour beats up a girl in a bar. I mean, maybe it’s a good thing bands don’t go bankrupt after videos anymore. and the Guns N’ Roses trilogy more than borders on the ridiculous (Hi Shannon Hoon! I see you, there on the roof!) but let’s take a look at some that kind of stuck with me.

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It all started when humble blogger Keith Spillett tried a little good ol’ fashioned investigative journalism for his blog Tyranny of Tradition, but it ended with an email from Sarah Palin herself praising trad metal outfit Ghost and condemning all of their fellow Swedes. How’d it get from there to here?

Spillett had been hammering Palin’s people for a response about her use of Blue Oyster Cult’s “Godzilla” as an entrance song for a campaign speech in 2008; after months and months of unreturned emails, Spillett’s inbox finally lit up with a response from Palin herself, and better yet, a follow-up including her thoughts on Ghost’s Opus Eponymous, an album that’s certainly got quite a bit of buzz in the metal community right now. Palin a metalhead? Who’da thunk it.

I’ll let you all read the entirety of Palin’s email on your own time, including bits about her love of Blue Oyster Cult and her TLC television show. But for now, the juicy bits:

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King Diamond is on the short list of legends whom it is almost impossible to imagine the metal world without; like Ronnie James Dio, I think we all imagine, on some level, that the King (who is currently 54 years old) will live forever, and while that might be true in the metaphorical sense, yesterday the world got a stark reminder that the man is very much flesh and blood like the rest of us: his wife, Livia, revealed that last month he underwent triple bypass open heart surgery, which is, as you can imagine, a very, very serious thing. The good news is, he seems to have come through it okay.

Here’s Livia’s statement in full, which she originally posted on King Diamond’s official website:

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Maiden and Slayer have been putting their names on custom-designed shoes for years. Mastodon Vans and 3 Inches of Blood Nikes were the most recent entries into the metal sneaker trend until Valient Thorr crashed their party earlier this year. Now King Diamond is along for the ride too.

So what do we all think of this recent band-endorsed sneaker fad in metal? Would you spend your hard-earned bones on a sneaker adorned in your favorite band’s logo? For the sake of this poll, let’s assume that any band sneakers we’re talking about are well-designed and look really cool.

Says MS Maniac Michael Arose, “King Diamond always wakes me up in the morning.” Touche.

-VN

Speaking of our friends at Metal Injection: they found these groovy clips which collect all the metal-celeb guest appearances on Metalocalypse. In case ya don’t know, everyone from Hetfield and Hammett to Corpsegrinder to King Diamond has done voice work for the show… one of many reasons why it’s worth your time.

Here’s the clips from season 1; check out season 2 after the jump. And don’t forget that Dethklok have a new album coming out, to be immediately followed by a ridiculously awesome tour with Mastodon, Converge, and High on Fire.

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Holy shitballs. Former Anthrax guitarist and current Christian midget watchmaker Dan Spitz has started a new project, DeuxMonkey, and it’s so objectively stupid that I’m amazed it’s not directed by Michael Bay.

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In a just future, heavy metal will be exalted not only for pushing musical extremes but also keeping alive interest in forgotten mythologies. What other genre of music engages so seriously the Norse lore of Enslaved, the ancient Egyptian myths of Nile, the Kabbalic fascination of Averse Sefira and the Sumerian (by way of Lovecraft) gods invoked by Morbid Angel? For every blasphemous black metal band that hates Christ through song, there’s another one singing blastbeaten praises to pre-Christian gods and goddesses.

Which you prefer may depend on how yer mommy raised ya. But for the times you’re feeling reverent towards a deity that Father O’Flaherty doesn’t know shit about, there is always Absu, longtime blackened dabblers in “mythological occult metal.” Ignore the lyrics to this Texan band’s eponymous fifth album at your own peril. While the music is more than strong enough to stand on its own, there’s something comforting about knowing that the 13 skintight jams on Absu go out to Mesopotamian spirits Bakaxikhekh and the mountain lord Enlil. This is positive music, meant to embolden gods and strengthen spells, not to destroy humanity. Plus, if there’s a god that takes delight in Absu’s blackened metal swarm, you definitely want to worship it, because it has great taste.

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What is the dorkiest thing you have ever done to show your love of metal?

I’ve had a few supreme dork moments of metal in my 42 years of geekdom. I once made myself up as King Diamond for the big Halloween street bash on Sixth Street in Austin, Texas, way back in 1985. Out of more than 100,000 revelers, a whopping 13 people knew who the hell I was dressed up as.

My dorkiest moment, however, took place way back in 1984, when I was seventeen years old.

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Do you like your metal fast and furious, NWOBHM and thrash-influenced, and with glass shattering, epicly high pitched vocalists? Then Cage just might be a band for you. The San Diego, CA-based band describes themselves as “100% American Heavy Metal,” but I’m hearing plenty of European influence here — lots of dual lead guitars, and lyrical topics and delivery closer to Judas Priest or Iron Maiden than Metallica. Nevertheless, the band is tight as hell and their recently album Hell Destroyer is definitely worth checking out.

Vocalist Sean Peck can shriek with the best of em, calling to mind top tier vocalists both old and new; Peck is as much Rob Halford as he is Into Eternity’s Stu Bloch. Behind him, the band never relents — lots of double-bass pounding and guitar theatrics.

With that in mind, check out Cage’s tribute song to the mighty King Diamond, called… “King Diamond.” Peck states “We wanted to pay tribute to the King and thought that all Cage and King Diamond fans would enjoy it. Personally, I am a big King Diamond fan and this is my and the band’s way of paying tribute to some of his past killer recorded works.”

Cage – “King Diamond” mp3

-VN

[Visit Cage on MySpace]