The Graveyard (album)

This article is about a concept album by King Diamond. For other uses, see Graveyard (disambiguation).
The Graveyard
Studio album by King Diamond
Released 30 September 1996
Recorded March–May 1996
Genre Heavy metal
Length 61:11
Label Massacre
Producer King Diamond
King Diamond chronology

The Spider's Lullabye
(1995)		 The Graveyard
(1996)		 Voodoo
(1998)
Professional ratings
Review scores
Source Rating
Allmusic [1]

The Graveyard is a concept album by King Diamond released in 1996. This was also the first album by King Diamond to be featured on the Massacre Records label. The album was remastered by Andy LaRocque and was re-released in 2009.

This album is one of the most successful King Diamond's albums peaking at #23 in the Finnish Charts and remaining for two weeks in the Top 40.[2]

Plot

In this story, King's character is an employee for a crooked, perverted and immoral mayor, Mayor McKenzie. One night, King's character happens to walk in on his boss molesting his daughter, Lucy. King doesn't keep quiet about this, but the mayor testifies that King is insane and has him locked up in Black Hill Sanitarium. After years of being there, King sees his chance to escape and takes it. Now mentally destroyed, King runs off to the local graveyard to hide from the police. Plotting his revenge against Mayor McKenzie, and killing people who pass through the graveyard at night, King is obsessed with a rumor that if you die in a graveyard and lose your head, your soul does not escape, and it lives forever in your head. With that thought in the back of his mind, he kidnaps Lucy McKenzie, the mayor's daughter, and calls the mayor out to the graveyard for the two of them to play a game. Eventually, Mayor McKenzie does arrive after King calls him by phone. Before he arrives, King buries Lucy who's conscious in one of seven empty graves, the tombstones of which read "LUCY FOREVER".

King eventually reveals himself to the Mayor and offers him a game. Mayor must dig out his little daughter from one of seven graves while wearing a blindfold. There are seven mounds, and he'll have three guesses or else he'll kill both of them. The Mayor gets the third guess right, but King knocks him out, dragging to his tomb and tying him down.

While the Mayor slowly regains consciousness, King digs up Lucy and takes her out of the coffin while he starts to torture the Mayor. To King's surprise, Lucy ends up pulling down on a cord that sends a sheet of broken glass from a broken chapel window down on King, decapitating him. The legend he was obsessed with turns out to be true, as his living head beckons Lucy not to leave him as she walks away with her Daddy. To his relief, Lucy takes King's head and puts it in her backpack. So King can be with her forever.[3]

Track listing

No. TitleWriter(s) Length
1. "The Graveyard"  King Diamond 1:22
2. "Black Hill Sanitarium"  King Diamond, Andy LaRocque 4:28
3. "Waiting"  King Diamond 4:26
4. "Heads on the Wall"  King Diamond, Andy LaRocque 6:20
5. "Whispers"  King Diamond, Andy LaRocque 0:31
6. "I'm Not a Stranger"  King Diamond 4:03
7. "Digging Graves"  King Diamond 6:56
8. "Meet Me at Midnight"  King Diamond, Andy LaRocque 4:46
9. "Sleep Tight Little Baby"  King Diamond 5:38
10. "Daddy"  King Diamond 3:22
11. "Trick or Treat"  King Diamond 5:09
12. "Up From the Grave"  King Diamond 3:18
13. "I Am"  King Diamond 5:50
14. "Lucy Forever"  King Diamond, Andy LaRocque 4:56

Credits

References

  1. ↑ Allmusic review
  2. ↑ Steffen Hung. "King Diamond - The Graveyard". finnishcharts.com. Retrieved 2012-02-19.
  3. ↑ Lyrics: http://www.darklyrics.com/lyrics/kingdiamond/thegraveyard.html