Released in September 30th 1996, “The Graveyard” is the seventh studio album by Danish heavy metal legend King Diamond. It was the band first album on Massacre Records and the last studio album to feature drummer Darrin Anthony.
It is also one of King Diamond most unusual stories.
Unlike many King Diamond tales filled with ghosts, ancestral curses and Satanic horror “The Graveyard” goes somewhere much more disturbing because its horror is completely human. Corruption, abuse, insanity, revenge and psychological destruction drive the story, turning the album into something closer to a twisted heavy metal horror musical.
A King Diamond Story Built on Revenge
The story follows King character, an employee of the crooked and immoral Mayor McKenzie. One night, he catches the mayor molesting his daughter, Lucy. When King refuses to stay silent, the mayor turns the situation against him, claiming that King is insane and having him locked away in Black Hill Sanitarium.
Years pass before King finally gets his chance to escape.
He strangles the nurse who arrives to administer his medication, steals her keys and disappears into the night. Mentally destroyed and hunted by police, he hides in a local graveyard and begins planning his revenge against Mayor McKenzie.
But King isn’t simply hiding there.
He begins killing people who pass through the graveyard at night while becoming obsessed with an urban legend: if someone dies in a graveyard and loses their head, their soul cannot escape and will live forever inside the severed head.
That legend becomes the key to the album twisted ending.
King kidnaps Lucy and calls her father to the graveyard. Before the mayor arrives, he buries Lucy still conscious in one of seven empty graves. Each tombstone reads “LUCY FOREVER”.
When Mayor McKenzie arrives, King gives him a horrifying game. Blindfolded, the mayor must dig through seven graves and find his daughter. He gets three guesses.
The mayor gets it right on his third attempt.
But King knocks him unconscious, drags him to his own grave and ties him down.
As the mayor slowly regains consciousness, King digs Lucy out and begins torturing him. Then everything suddenly turns against King.
Lucy pulls down on a cord connected to a broken chapel window. A sheet of shattered glass crashes down and decapitates King.
And then comes the twist.
The legend King believed in is real.
His severed head remains alive and begs Lucy not to leave him. As Lucy walks away with her father, she takes King head and places it inside her backpack.
King gets exactly what he wanted.
He will be with Lucy forever.
Horror, Heavy Riffs and the Darkest Side of King Diamond
The one-man-musical feeling is one of the most striking things about “The Graveyard”. King stays deep inside the first-person viewpoint of the character, and his vocals shift constantly with the narrator increasingly unstable state.
Spoken passages, deep baritones and trademark falsettos make the character mental collapse part of the music itself.
The album also has a particularly heavy moment in “Digging Graves”. Nearly seven minutes long, the track brings sludgy, forceful, doom-laden riffs with heavy Black Sabbath vibes.
There is also an interesting contradiction surrounding “The Graveyard”. The album divided critics and is frequently ranked lower on fan lists because of its dry production, yet commercially it performed strongly in Europe. It reached No. 23 on the Finnish Charts and remained in the Top 40 for two weeks.
For King Diamond, “The Graveyard” also marked several lineup milestones. It was his first album released through Massacre Records in Europe and the final studio appearance of drummer Darrin Anthony, who left the band following a severe car accident.
The album was later remastered by Andy LaRocque and re-released in 2009.
Lore & Conceptual Trivia
The Twist Ending: King character is framed as insane by Mayor McKenzie, escapes from Black Hill Sanitarium and plots revenge. His plan ends with his accidental decapitation, only for the graveyard legend to prove real when his severed head remains alive.
A Purely Mortal Horror: Unlike many King Diamond stories “The Graveyard” focuses entirely on psychological and human horror, dealing with child abuse, mental destruction and human depravity.
The Shared Universe Theory: The mention of Black Hill Sanitarium has led many fans to connect it with the unnamed mental asylum associated with “Them” suggesting that both stories may exist within the same universe.
The Graveyard Lineup
- King Diamond – Vocals, keyboards, production, mixing
- Andy LaRocque – Guitars, keyboards on “Whispers,” production
- Herb Simonsen – Guitars
- Chris Estes – Bass
- Darrin Anthony – Drums
“The Graveyard” may not be the first King Diamond album that comes to mind for every fan, but its story is impossible to forget. It takes a deeply disturbing human situation, turns it into a twisted revenge tale and gives it one of the strangest endings in King Diamond catalog.
And if that final image of Lucy walking away with King still-living head in her backpack doesn’t stay with you, you probably weren’t listening closely enough.
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