King Diamond: Fatal Portrait White Vinyl LP

Why you'll love it

This limited white vinyl edition suits a record whose centrepiece is a song called "Dressed in White." Fatal Portrait has sold more than 100,000 copies in North America and launched one of metal's great storytelling careers.

This edition

White vinyl
Limited edition

About the album

Most bands spend their first album introducing themselves. King Diamond spent his introducing a ghost. Fresh from Mercyful Fate, the Danish singer built his new band around a falsetto that could rattle a chandelier and a taste for proper gothic storytelling, and the title itself comes straight out of Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray.

Five of the songs, the first four plus "Haunted," tell one tale: a narrator frees the spirit of a little girl named Molly from a candle, and she returns to settle accounts with the mother who kept her in the attic. "The Candle" sets the scene with organ and slow-burning menace, "The Jonah" and "The Portrait" push the story along, and "Charon" and "Halloween" stand on their own as galloping metal. Andy LaRocque joined the sessions at the last minute, and his solo on "Dressed in White" served as his audition. He got the job and has been beside King ever since. Michael Denner shares the guitars, Timi Hansen plays bass and Mikkey Dee, later of Motörhead, is on drums; King produced with Rune Höyer.

Fatal Portrait arrived on Roadrunner in March 1986 and set the template for the full concept albums that followed. It is, as far as we know, the first heavy metal record to take its title from a Victorian novel, which makes it practically required reading.

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