Artist: King Diamond
Album: The Puppet Master
Year: 2003
Line-Up:
King Diamond- Vocals
Livia Zita- Vocals (Backing)
Matt Thompson- Drums
Hal Patino- Bass
Andy LaRocque- Guitars, Keyboards
Mike Wead- Guitars
Sub-Genre: Heavy Metal
Few people in the metal world put as
much thought or efforts in their works as King Diamond. With his
Alice Cooper inspired theatrics comprising of horror stories, King
has put down album after album of high quality heavy metal. Which
brings us to the topic King's 12th output titled The
Puppet Master. Continuing on the legacy of The Eye, Them and Abigail,
The Puppet Master is a cleverly crafted horror story with equally
well composed music to back it up.
Among the technical performances, King
is in good form. His trademark wails are toned down, but his use of
mid range is very effective creating a complex mash up of vocals. The
back up vocals by Livia are also very nicely done. Guitar work is
great as usual on a King Diamond album and LaRoque must be appalauded
for an impressive lead performance. The album consists of 12 tracks
which tell the story of a guy and his girlfriend who attend a puppet
show and then are captured by the puppet master and turned into
puppets themselves. Cheesy and silly? Oh well it might seem so, but
believe me, King can scare the shit out of most people from the
silliest stories as he did on Them or Voodoo and does it again so
effectively on this record. The music is composed such that fans of
the band might immediately identify and connect with. Let us face it
folks, King Diamond was never the biggest of experimenters in sound
and rightly so for his music has always been crafted cleverly enough
and tailored to his needs to match his lyrics and themes.
The album is highly consistent and
rarely does a moment of mediocrity spring up. The tracks are catchy
along with the mild progressive nature of the music. The atmosphere
is quite dark and sad, if not very scary like that was the case with
Abigail. Among the tracks, the first five tracks are absolote gems.
The best of the bunch has to be the dark and complex Emerencia which
contains an excellent vocal perofrmance by King. So Sad is a
surprisingly good ballad featuring a duet between King and Livia.
Blood To Walk is a weaker track compared with the rest of the album
with a relatively very simple structure and lack of proper
atmosphere.
The album is another stellar addition
in the King's catalog with such gems as The Eye, Abigail, Them. The
excellent storyline, though cheesy and silly at thought, is presented
with a perfection making the listener deeply absorbed and involved in
it. Bottom-line; The Puppet Master lives up to the legacy of the King
and is a must listen for all metal heads. Those who haven't heard of
the King (though how this may have happened is beyond me) are also
adviced to listen to this one as it is serve as an excellent
introduction to the dark, bloodcurdling work of the King.
Final rating: 96/100
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