Even better than The Puppet Master – 99%
Hammertime, December 23rd, 2007
The King of horror metal put out a new studio album four years after his earlier masterpiece The Puppet Master. I expected that the album would be great, but I didn’t expect it to be better than the glorious The Puppet Master. Give Me Your Soul… Please blowed out my mind even after the few first listens. After that I have listened the record over 50 times and it still sounds fresh and rocks harder than other KD studio albums since Abigail and “Them”. The best thing on GMYSP is the strenght of each song. There are no fillers or mediocre tracks, not even single short poor parts are very hard to find.
The intro The Dead is one of my personal favourite intros from King Diamond’s discography. In fact the classic Funeral is the only better one. The atmosphere of The Dead with the organ sound is perfect for opening dark heavy metal album. Never Ending Hill with its Painkiller-kind riff is the fast headbanging song of the album. However, I think the best songs on the album are heavy rocking The Floating Head and tremendous title track Give Me Your Soul. Also Black of Night and The Girl In The Bloody Dress stand out every time. The final track Moving On is a better slow composition than So Sad.
Andy La Rocque’s guitar work is on high standards. The riffs and the solos are overall more interesting than everything after the classic King Diamond’s works Abigail and “Them”. There are even some cool references to earlier King Diamond works, which are there for fans to find like King said himself. Mike Wead also delivers the goods better than ever. Livia Zita’s beautiful female vocals are far better than on TPM album. The combination of King Diamond’s dark vocals and Livia’s innocent singing are one of the most fascinating new elements on modern King Diamond albums. Don’t get scared, because King Diamond sounds still very like old school. How about Hal Patino? The bass player looks like Alice Cooper, but his playing is easier to hear than before and he plays well.
King Diamond’s singing is on high class as usual. I do love every variations of that man’s voice. The vocal melodies of the album are the best ones in whole King Diamond career. Falsettos are not as clearly heard as before, which doesn’t much bother on that album. Maybe there could be that classical Abigail-like falsetto-singing, but I’m also satisfied without it. High vocals are mixed differently on the background, which really works. Still I hope that there would be more old school falsetto singing as well on the next studio album. The singing of the album would be perfect if there could be both the background falsettos and his trademark ones. King Diamond’s other voices are also unique, not just the falsetto vocals. There are no metal singers on earth that sound just like King Diamond. That’s what I love about King Diamond’s singing. The dark whispering part on the end of Shapes of Black is absolutely amazing: “no more light”.
rafazardly 