Listening back to Abigail, the second solo effort from King Diamond I can’t believe this was as popular as it was back in the late 80s, but I guess never discount the theatrical flair that would come to dominate the MTV generation. This was a huge album at the time, and my immediate takeaway listening to it in the Year of Our Lord 2024 is the distinct similarity to Fates Warning’s Awaken the Guardian, released the year before, rather than a now tenuous grasp with Mercyful Fate. The music is more progressive, and the conceptual narrative of a couple moving into a haunted house with the spirit of a stillborn child now stretches over the entire album as opposed to occupying a suite of songs. It’s as ambitious as anything done to that point – certainly in metal – and the fact that it lives up to its reputation, even 37 years later is a welcome surprise.

As before, my love of the album mainly comes from the music, so if you’re looking for more about the concept, you can check it out via Wikipedia. The entire lineup returns (though for the last time) with Diamond again taking up the majority of the songwriting, though Michael Denner and Andy la Rocque assist on a few tracks. Abigail opens with the brief prologue “Funeral” which is really good at setting the ambience for the spookiness to follow, all baroque keyboards and evil narration about the burying of the titular character. It then launches into “Arrival” one of the few songs I knew as a kid from King’s discography. The driving riff underneath Denner’s opening solo is classic Fates Warning…or is it classic King Diamond? That ubiquitous gallop was also over Fatal Portrait, but not nearly as precise and metallic as it is here. King’s voice is once again fire, and when he goes into that upper range, stacking vocal on top of vocal it’s glorious. We get some really great solos, and the riffs morph into new progressive sections as the song goes on. Absolutely love the middle break with Diamond’s refrain of “18 is 9!” And if we ARE going to speak lyrics for a moment, the specificity of the lyrics and the mystery of what “18 is 9” means is really cool…even for a guy that’s not a lyric head.

“A Mansion in Darkness” is even more furious, and on the vinyl I love hearing the additional percussion Mickey Dee is using to accentuate the rhythm. It’s one of the tracks la Rocque co-wrote, and the middle break with its harmonized solo and rollback on the tempo is a great touch to an otherwise frantic driving rocker. The production is slicker but doesn’t sacrifice an iota of the power or aggression in the songwriting. The opening riff to “The Family Ghost” is an all-timer, and instantly brings back memories of hearing this stuff as a kid and just not knowing what to do with it – but knowing it was connecting on a primal level. It helps when you see something like this on MTV:

I love it when King’s voice gets low and menacing, as it does on the link “I’ll break your neck!” and I equally love it when the riff gets almost funky right after. There’s a reason this was picked to be a single – it’s a pure distillation of what makes King Diamond what they are as a band. Gorgeous acoustic playing by La Rocque opens the final track on Side A, “The 7th Day of July, 1777” and it’s another driving rocker, again co-written by La Rocque. If I’m being completely honest it’s the weakest track so far, not giving us a lot of anything new, pushing back the more outlandish progressive elements in favor of some serious soloing. Again though: the middle solo section is a welcome change-up, something the band seems to excel in. Pushing it to the back half of the side makes sense, and is another reason I love vinyl so much, especially for older records where sequencing for 20-22 minutes sides was taken very seriously.

Keeping the funk around for Side B, “Omens” starts with a tasty groove before going into one of the more unique verses and choruses they’ve done to date. I really love the psychedelic swirl in the chorus. The bridge has a great keyboard riff before diving back into the guitar solos. Denner and la Rocque were some of the finest players around this time, and there’s no shortage of ideas throughout Abigail. Next up is another change in tempo and mood with “The Possession” andthe first thing my ears latch onto is the cymbal work of Mickey Dee. Dude continues to be a monster to this day for a reason, and he demonstrates that all over this album. Love the staccato riff that backs up the solos.

Sitting here early in the morning (it’s not quite 7am yet) letting the album wash over me full blast through a nice set of headphones I’m transported back to my youth, when I would spend all day putting records on over and over, laying bed and absorbing every note. So there’s definitely a nostalgia factor playing here, even though the reality is I never owned any King Diamond until I was an adult. Does that make sense? It’s more the nostalgia for how something like this would be fresh and new to me, a diversion from the same old power chord stack a lot of hair metal I was listening to (and loving, let’s be honest) wasn’t doing.

The title track is a bit of another outlier, and I’m really digging how King Diamond uses the second half of the album to experiment more with form. Reading through the liner notes I was never aware of how much King Diamond did on these albums. Beyond the lyrics and vocals he’s the primary songwriter and also the producer. Is this just an ego thing? Not sure, although I do know Micheal Denner and Timi Hansen left after this album. Which maybe speaks volumes and maybe doesn’t. The track’s ending with the exotic melodies in the riffs and the expanding keyboard presence is properly eerie and effective. That leaves only the seven and half minute epic “Black Horsemen” and strangely, the first thing I think of when I hear the clean guitar opening is Ozzy Osbourne’s “You Can’t Kill Rock and Roll” from Diary of a Madman. It’s not exact but man, is it similar. Narratively and musically the song completes the concept, and works as a suitably somber, if slightly trepidatious ending to Abigail.

By the end I’m definitely left with a high consideration for both the album and King Diamond overall, something I know from experience will hold true with the next album, incidentally the first one I ever purchased back in my late 20s. Next time we give our attention to…Them.