Metal Reviews

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Bought this one last week

Goods:

1. Sound quality is great. Guitars are crunchy and King's voice is right at the forefront where it should be

2. Playing is superb. King very rarely hits a sour note or lets his voice get away from him, and what can you say about Andy?

Bads:

1. 2 discs is not enough given the breadth of King's material, though I would've settled for 3

2. No love for any of the underappreciated mid-late 90's albums (Spider's Lullabye, Graveyard, Voodoo and House of God), and only one song from Conspiracy?

3. There is no way that "Funeral" can lead into anything other than "Arrival" (whose exclusion was criminal, as it's King's best song IMO)

Personal Score: 8/10

How much of this album would you say is overdubbed, if any?

I'm no audio-mix expert, but I'd say there's a decent amount

It's certainly not raw like "Live 1987"

Still haven't heard this live record, but judging by Abigail Live, maybe the vocals were doctored, it's very easy to do nowadays and can sound natural even with bad off key notes...
Then again, I've seen some Canadian bootleg where King sang very well... Who knows.



This I really can't understand!
House Of God is among his three best releases IMO, and the rest of these aren't much below...

Is there a DVD on the way?

Oh and I saw King Diamond last year live and their sound and vocals were almost flawless, so I doubt they needed to do too much fixing in that department.

Not that much was overdubbed BUT the CD is in fact a great deal of shows all incorporated into one "general" live show.

King's voice is not overdubbed by himself but by Livia Zita live. She did most of the really high pitched singing in choruses and such. King's voice WAS awesome on this tour though. I have seen King a bunch of times and he is usually not so very much on the mark pitch-wise. This time he absolutely killed and what he knew he couldn't do Ms. Livia Zita took care of for him.

Track listing sucks in my opinion, especially since both Abigail II and Puppet Master were horrible albums.

Matt Thompson is the first drummer to fill Mikkey Dee's shoes live. Props for that.

Andy was great all throughout the tour. Mike Wead (who is an excellent guitarplayer) suffered some weak nights and was saved by how they chose from different shows to make the CD.

Hal is always great.

Now can we have a new fucking Mercyful Fate album please?

WOW! That is interesting that the female vocalist sung back ups with King on the songs....I'll take your word for it but I still have to listen to this album a few more times to see if I can tell whether it does sound like a female doing the parts King would normally do.....