Wednesday, January 29, 2014

KING DIAMOND - The Eye (1990)

Inquisition: The Devilish Eye of Man


„The Eye” – this album (recorded in 1990) stands proudly next to “Abigail” (1987) as the brightest pearl in King Diamond astounding career. I reckon this effort to the magic of the eighties, for certain songs from “The Eye” have ability to fight with many thrash bullets at those days, yet it was (and damn, still is!) strong evidence that heavy metal had something to say. The fifth album of this Dane is simply excellent because of two factors: both music and lyrics concerning dark and fearful times of inquisition.

I bought this piece of metal in the middle of the nineties with “Conspiracy” album, and as a matter of fact “The Eye” became one of the best albums in my metal collection, I think it was my first album when lyrics had one concept – inquisition. King tells two stories connected by one thing – the necklace and, as he stated in the booklet, the main part of the stories is unfortunately true. Musically, King and his musicians showed catchier album than “Conspiracy”, and by some fans it is considered as too commercial, too calculated and sales-oriented. Shortly about it: I completely disagree with such stupid opinions! All right, let’s back to the music itself - I remember that for the first time of listening to it, “Behind These Walls” was my favourite song due to very hard, strong yet melodic guitar work and keyboard as separate instrument to create the atmosphere. In addition the guitar leads were really paralyzing my senses, so for sure this song is one of the best King performance. Despite of presence of such an excellent song on “The Eye”, “Insanity” (written by LaRocque himself) was the track I remembered in the turn of hand - this three minute instrumental composition is beautiful (just as fair as a rose when describing a woman…), with impressive miraculous melody tunes. All is suddenly changed when the last twenty seconds enter new level – horrible, fearful music sounds, it is real insanity strictly connected with the things which Diamond describe. Till this ending I call it ‘beauty’… and I do not know whether it is good way for such naming…

Of course, in process of time, “The Eye” revealed many secrets hidden in music layers and after all these years I can state that every second coming from the album is excellent. From the first track “Eye of the Witch” where hard guitars (listen to these solo leads!!!) are supported by keyboards and build the atmosphere, to finishing tunes of “The Curse”. Songs are maintained is mid-tempo mostly, some of them are just spectacles and I feel like a spectator in the open air theatre. Even I can smell the odour of burnt bodies of the convicted, it is terrific indeed. Do you need an example? “The Trial (Chambre Urdente)” is such a song with dismaying dialogue between supposed witch Jeanne Dibasson and Nicholas de la Reymie – head investigator of the Christian Burning Court, here the music is in the background, and multitude of King vocals is in major role, I really can’t believe that only one person is responsible for such a great final effect. I wrote about the music which is rather kept down here, but once again solo leads are the thing I have to distinguish. In turn, the next “Burn” is opened by group of aggressive yet quite fast riffs, the fourth song “Two Little Girls” is something like a horror introduction – only King vocals and keyboards creating evil atmosphere… at the stake where witches burn, the necklace is in their hands…

The necklace story goes on, but summing all the things up I declare surely: this is very equal album, each song has something to offer, just like in the spectacle with the best actors. Even after all these long years of listening to it and other Diamond releases, “The Eye” still captures an attention as the real pearl and belongs to the best titles in my heavy metal collection. The mark isn’t the highest one, because only one band called Savatage was able to record better albums in the mighty eighties and weaker nineties years. Unfortunately “The Eye” was the last album with this unique mark of genius, the next performance released five years later was only decent and good. The magic of the first five albums has gone… but every second of King Diamond’s music has its own charm and heavy metal feeling. 

99/100
-Tlacaxipehualiztli

(previously written for Encyclopaedia Metallum, on January, 2012, now modified a bit)

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