King Diamond: Metal Blade to Reissue 'The Spider's Lullabye' and 'The Graveyard' Next Month

King Diamond guitarist Andy LaRocque has remastered King Diamond's mid-90's albums The Spider's Lullabye and The Graveyard which are set to be released on October 13th. Each album will include bonus material that purchasers will be able to obtain digitally. Both The Spider's Lullabye and The Graveyard will include live “bootleg” versions (with video footage) of the following songs: 'The Spider's Lullabye' (from the album of the same name) and ‘Trick Or Treat' and 'Up From The Grave' from The Graveyard.

“Andy LaRocque re-mastered both records and you can really hear more details and sounds that I remember recording but didn't come through in the original mastering. The records have much more bottom end this time around. There's even more details and clarity than the original version and you'll hear things you've never heard before in both releases. Andy did a great job re-mastering and improving these albums above and beyond my expectations. The artwork has also been completely redone for Spiders and Graveyard and is just amazing. I did not expect them to come out this good and am just completely thrilled with the result.

We originally were going to include bonus footage on the albums as a CD-ROM, but the sound and video quality was going to suffer tremendously and that is just unacceptable. Instead, the bonus footage is going to be available for download to those who purchase the albums. The video downloads will be available in multiple formats so everyone can see them."
-King Diamond

Links:
King Diamond's Website

Mercyful Fate Release New Versions of 1983's "Evil" and "Curse Of The Pharaohs"

Mercyful Fate (who are currently 'hibernating') got back together last year to re-record "Evil" and "Curse of the Pharaohs" for Guitar Hero: Metallica because the original masters were lost. The songs will be available to purchase digitally from iTunes on July 14th and a special edition vinyl picture disc single will be available on September 1st.

King Diamond comments: “It was a lot of fun to get a chance to re-record "Evil" and "Curse of the Pharaohs" from our 1983 "Melissa" album. It was cool to go into the studio and try to figure out all the various harmony vocals and see if I could still do them. The other guys had a lot of fun with this project too, and the whole thing turned out much better than we could have hoped for. Everyone nailed their performances and Hank's solos were even slightly improved. Everything is right where it should be and with a much better sound! The “feel” was there and all of the guys - Hank, Denner, Timi and Bjarne are all naturals. The versions that will be up on iTunes were mastered by Andy LaRocque and even with a 2009 sound, there's no doubt that these songs were recorded by Mercyful Fate!”

Links:
King Dianond's MySpace Profile