King Diamond - 'The Spider's Lullabye'

Metal Blade resurrects a pair of the death metal impresario’s mid-nineties recordings, The Graveyard and The Spider’s Lullaby. The latter is one of King Diamond’s finer moments.

Considered by many the Stephen King of the metalverse, King Diamond certainly made a case for himself early on in his octave-spelunking career with a successive quartet of genre classics: Fatal Portrait, Abigail, Them and Conspiracy.

Stark, brutal and grandiose, King Diamond is a bona fide original. Perhaps only Ihsahn could be considered worthy of standing within his vocal dusk. Unfortunately, Diamond in the nineties lost much of his U.S. audience while maintaining a stout following overseas.

King Diamond kept a sturdy flow of albums throughout the decade which some argue began a minor downward spiral beginning with 1990’s The Eye. Said listeners likewise uphold Diamond regained his proper footing with Metal Blade on 2007’s Give Me Your Soul…Please. Hence, the King’s present American distributor is releasing the first of many upcoming reissues of his back catalog.

With The Spider’s Lullabye, Diamond instantly makes a statement with “From the Other Side” as the album strikes a largely tuneful character easier to soak up than some of his other records. “Killer” is the most traditional King Diamond striker of the album, yet The Spider’s Lullaby swerves towards a more vintage shock rock vibe.

If anyone is going to make the point about Diamond’s affinity for Alice Cooper, it’s the top hat rockout wave of “The Poltergeist,” complete with organ-tripped phantasmagoria and a ghoul-related strut to the verses. Even though “Dreams” is vintage King Diamond (as well as Lizzy Borden) in the busy and boisterous opening bars, the crawling stamp thereafter is reminiscent of Alice’s suspenseful drawls. King Diamond manages to drop to a particularly gravelly pitch at times, dead-on to Alice before springing to his lofty falsettos. How can you not be entertained by that?

“Six Feet Under” maintains the Alice shtick while toughening up to a power metal punch-out perfectly suited to King Diamond’s zigzag pipes. The title track likewise swims to an Alice groovy ghoulie slide, as does the pleasurably macabre “Room 17,” which somehow rings compact at eight minutes.

Whether or not King Diamond intended for The Spider’s Lullabye to be his own beefed-up salute to the master of theatrical horror rock, it comes off exactly as that. Yet, King’s schizophrenic gore gala is but one part of the puzzle. Andy LaRoque and Herb Simonsen are a large part of the reason why The Spider’s Lullaby is a successful jaunt. “Room 17,” “To the Morgue” and “From the Other Side” are all viable showcases of their prowess. Not to forget Diamond’s savvy as a frolicking terror host who knows how to implement his harbingers of chaos precisely where they’re needed.

The Spider’s Lullabye is one of the King’s rightfully prouder moments. It’s not as extravagant as Abigail or Them, yet all things being products of their times of conception, King Diamond’s option for structurally-sound shock rock numbers makes The Spider’s Lullabye a pleasing run-through of his audile gauntlet.