King Diamond
Deadly Lullabies-Live

December 2004
Released: 2004, Metal Blade
Rating: 3.5/5
Reviewer: JP

Along with King’s X, Malevolent Creation and a few others this year, King Diamond has finally released his long-awaited and long-overdue live CD. I’m slightly disappointed because originally this was supposed to be a triple Live CD with Abigail I & II in their entirety with a bonus disc of stuff. Oh well. We do get an Abigail mini-suite and overall five of my favorite KD tunes of all time. The production is awesome, almost too good but I suspect there was little post-production because the players are so talented, the band so well rehearsed and so tight I bet they do sound that good live. The all-star line-up and visual extras scream for a DVD treatment. For an evil guy, the King sure thanks the crowd a lot! Ha! ha! The package could use a little more info, like lyrics and where these songs were recorded and so on. The problem with waiting so long for a live CD is that the catalogue is so extensive they can’t nearly cover it all and so several albums had no representation on the disc at all. This is more of a ‘point in time/ tour document’ live CD than the monumental career retrospective I was maybe hoping for. Still it’s the King and he reigns supreme.