For all the King Diamond fans out there, the wait for new music has always been charged with suspense and expectation. Now, guitarist Andy La Rocque is peeling back the curtain on what’s to come: a full-blown horror trilogy, the first installment of which is titled Saint Lucifer’s Hospital 1920.
Speaking with Guitar World, La Rocque offered insight into the creative direction of the upcoming album. Notably, the band is intentionally stepping away from polished precision in favor of a more organic, unfiltered sound.
“It’s mainly to get that organic sound back, where everything doesn’t have to be… placed perfectly in time, or even in pitch,” La Rocque explained. “There’s got to be some rock ‘n’ roll to it. [Laughs] If you listen to an album that’s totally perfect, it gets boring. We wanted to make an album where it’s a little bit more alive, like it was in the ’80s.”
That pursuit of authenticity is also leading King Diamond to revisit the musical DNA of their earliest releases. “We’re trying to avoid the stiffness of the albums of the ’90s and early 2000s,” he continued. “Really, we’re just trying to loosen it up a little bit. Then again, we also had a talk about going back to the roots with the songwriting. Some parts are going back to Fatal Portrait and Abigail when it comes to the riffing style, but it’s also going to be totally different from what you’ve ever heard from us before.”
The band seems keenly aware of the balance between legacy and evolution. By reintroducing the raw qualities that made their early work so compelling, King Diamond is staking a claim not just to their past, but to a new phase that sounds as unpredictable as it does ambitious.
Timing, as always, is crucial. According to La Rocque, the recording process is on a tight schedule due to summer festival commitments. “We’re going to do some festivals in Europe this summer, so everything has to be recorded and done before we do that, that’s for sure. We’re still working on some of the other stuff we have. It’s going to be eight or nine songs on the album, I believe.”
Late last year, the band dropped Spider Lilly, their first new single in quite some time. The track marked a new collaborative turn in production as well, with Arthur Rizk handling both the mix and master. The song, written by King Diamond himself, may offer a small taste of what’s to come, an unsettling blend of vintage style and fresh menace.
