Then the story starts and the intro explains the theory about this real place, and then starts the album and my story. It is a twisted journey about a person who gets thrown around from one twist to another. First of all, he's out traveling, and this takes place 200 years ago, and he's out traveling in some mountains. I'll make a short version of it, you can always catch up on it later. (laughs) But while he's out traveling, suddenly the road changes before his eyes, he knows he's been there many times before because he recognizes more and he has all these wolves suddenly howling around him and like, "Oh my god I've got to get out of here." Suddenly he's surrounded by them. He's literally prepared to die. Then this big black, gray, and white wolf steps out with these major blue eyes, and all the others kind of back off. It seems to speak in his mind, without actually speaking of course, and it wants him to follow it. He does and they end up at the top of this mountain where there is this completely decaying church. And he follows the wolf inside, and once they get inside, it changes before his eyes into this beautiful church. There's some strange things in there but he doesn't pay too much attention to that at this point. The wolf suddenly starts shedding its skin, you know, and turns into the most beautiful woman he's ever seen in his life. The perfect picture that he'd ever hoped of was right there and he instantaneously just falls in love with her. He doesn't care that she was a wolf or whatever, he doesn't' panic, he's just totally happy now. And then they start having fun. They actually have sex and everything else, you know, in the church, the most holy place. But they don't care, it's just totally free will.

Then suddenly one day she says that there's something that he needs to know. She has to give him two choices, and they're not very nice, either of them. Just when everything was great, perfect, she tells him that a year ago she signed a pact to be a guardian of this church, and she only had one year. If she doesn't find another one in this year, she cannot leave in the shape of a woman - only in the shape of a wolf. She says, you sign the pact and take over this guardian job. I don't know what I'm guarding, you just have to do it. If you do it, you will set me free and I can leave this church in the shape of a woman and continue my life. The second I step my foot outside the door, I will lose my memory so I'll never know that I ever met you, and we won't see each other again. The other option is, that we have one or two more days, I have seven days left, and you will see me die before your eyes. If you don't do it, we won't see each other again. And then he sets her free and takes over this job that he doesn't know what it consists of.

Then he notices how twisted this church is because there are mirrors and crosses and the result is like everything had two. The way I described it there's other things that are not in that real church. I describe it as two pulpits, this one with gargoyles, and the other pulpit has golden figures on the front. Just kind of creating chaos, 'cause it's two opposites going on that don't belong together. So now suddenly he starts feeling the loneliness, cause there's nothing he can do, he's confined to the church now. He can only leave in the shape of a wolf, and that doesn't give him much. So he gets more and more desperate. He first starts drinking, you know, and gets desperate, and he finally gets so desperate and mad that he goes all insane. He starts smashing anything he can find that has any relationship to the church and he ends up smashing all those mirrors, crosses, and everything. He smashes the last one and all of a sudden he moves and there's a big, black hole in the floor there, and he stares into the dark, and he knows he has to go there. Better he should go below the mountain, and he can't just stay in this church anymore either.

So he walks down there and he discovers that there's these long narrow halls down there with side chambers - it's a catacombs. And these side chambers are full of human bones, you know, and he just has this candle, and suddenly he sees this glow coming from one of the side chambers. He walks in there, and there he sees it's a life-sized statue of the Virgin Mary but it's carved in wood. He freaks out and he starts smashing it up. He breaks it, but it's hollow and there is something inside. What he finds is a mummy wearing a crown of thorns. He is finding Jesus' mummy down there. He starts unwinding the bandages and from inside this mummy's head, and out through the empty eye sockets because there's no eyes there anymore. There' s this light seeping out from the openings and suddenly he starts screaming and turns around and runs screaming for his life.

He runs through the catacombs and this light starts coming after him, follow ing him. He runs back up into the church trying to find some safety, you know, but the light comes straight up after him and fills the entire church, and then he sees inside the light all these different faces and bodies swaying around. This entity starts talking to him and says that, "I am the highest power there is, and you have gone where nobody should go, and now you will pay for this - nobody must ever know." This person is now starting to have a conversation, and kind of a confrontation but it's more like a conversation, with an entity that claims to be the highest god. The entity tells him that he will never know why they kept what he found down there. It could be that they were keeping his mummy away from god so that god could never make him walk on the earth again. It could also be to keep him safe from people like you who would probably crucify him or try to crucify him again, but we're not going to tell you exactly why. It's none of your business. All you need to know is not what we are about, us, the highest god - because it does refer to itself as, I am many, we are one, that way, I am kind - and it says that you shouldn't bother with what we are, you just need to know that we are, and that should be proof enough. This guy says, "Sorry pal, I can't deal with that kind of stuff. If you want to me to believe you're the highest god, you need to prove it the right way." Then the god says, "I created god's faith for people who wanted to be mine. They 're nothing but little puppets on my strings. I just created it for the minds who had conflict, that power, that conflict, I created it - I did all that." This guy was still not buying it. He says to this entity, or god, that "the only way you can prove that you're the only right god is if you show yourselves to mankind so that everybody sees you at the same time and they we'll all know that you're the only one that's real. Then you need to tell us, why we are here, what is the meaning of people and life, and tell us what happens when we die. Show us." And then the god - this entity - does not get back to him. And he says, "You know, I bet you cannot, because you don't know the truth because you are not the highest, you're just another cog in someone else's higher strings and that could go on for ever and ever." Then the guy says to the god, "You know what? I'm not going be a servant of some unknown god. I will prove and show to you something. I will show you that I can stand up for myself. I can make up my own mind and take according action. That's what I'm going to do now, I'm going to choose death. That way I'll know why I'm here sooner than else, and I will be out of this place." This guy has an actual goal, he walks up to the highest tower and he jumps out and hangs himself. He actually finds his piece of mind. The last song is an instrumental piece called, "Piece of Mind". I would never choose that solution myself. Unless I was in this scenario where he's cursed to this church - can't really leave this church. I have an opportunity to leave my house. This guy was kept a prisoner almost by something that won't let him go, by chance. So that's the story, right there.

The main things behind the story, and what I'm trying to say with that story, is first of all, that it makes me sick inside to see all these religious wars that are being fought today because of religious differences - which is the reason for 90% of those wars. I mean, basically, to think that people can fight because of a god that, I feel, I think that man has created a lot of different gods in his own image. Not the other way around. That's why we have so many different ones. No human being or no religion, let's put it that way, has ever proved to everybody on earth that they believe in the right god. Nobody's going to prove that, cause if they did then we'd all believe in the same god, right? If one person had to prove that his god was the right one, he would be able to show everyone else. And then why would anyone doubt it? If it'd been proved to them? But we do not believe in the same god because they're man-made. Since we don't have the proof of who's right and wrong, it makes absolutely no sense that people are killing each other in wars because they want to be the one that believes in the right god. It's kinda like ammunition. A big wrestler goes up against Einstein and beats him up. Because he can beat Einstein doesn't mean he can say that Einstein's theories were wrong and that he has a theory that's right, that two and two is three. Just because you beat someone up doesn't mean you're right.

Nobody has ever been able to prove to mankind that they believe in the right god. Maybe because there are no real gods. I don't know, I'm not claiming to know, but claiming with this album to know that nobody knows for sure. Nobody has got proof. The same goes for the reason for human life. Nobody has proven that. The actual experience of dying, and what happens afterwards. Nobody has proof of that. but we do walk around spending a lot of time fearing it, and feeling bad about it. Feeling bad about a thing we have no clue what it's all about. Another thing that doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me - well, I don't care about dying, really, because I don't know what that experience is about. Why would I fear it? I'm not going to hole up and spend all my time worrying about when I'm going to die, and why don't I understand, and why am I here. I've accepted that that's a fact. It is like that. As long as I am alive here on this earth, I probably will not know. The first chance I'll get to know why I was here on earth is probably when I'm not here anymore.

I've tried to say, can't people please take it a little more easy with their gods and their religion because we do not have proof, you know. So you have no reason to be so stuck on your high horse, and think you are right because you have no proof. So relax and keep it to yourself, please. It would be a much better world if you could do just that, give me that much. That's very much the message of the album - accepting that there are certain things we cannot comprehend, you know. So why do we waste all this time messing around with it, because we won't know. We simply won't know until we're not here anymore. I would much rather, and that's what I'm doing, instead of wasting my time thinking and worrying about things - I take that time and I use it for things that I have facts for. I know for a fact that I'm a human being on this planet we call Earth. I know that if I do certain things it makes me feel good inside. I would take all that time and use it to do all those things that make me feel good inside. When people feel good inside, they're usually having a easier time and giving other people a helping hand and smiling.

There is a positive at the end of the story, it's a moral. But it's a big accusing finger against that which we have been talking about that are the most evil. It makes absolutely no sense that people are trying to be the one that is right about their god, because none of us will ever prove, first of all, that they're right. That's kind of the main issue. Andy La Rocque and I actually had talks about continuity because if you don't go the whole way, if you don't make this to the end, you know, if you don't get into it and you know your work, don't be constantly thinking about it. You know some people say, "Yeah, I'm going to go to heaven." What's that? Do you really know what that that is? "Well, it's a great place." How do you know that? You've never been there, you've never met anyone who's been there. It's just something you read in a old book written two thousand years ago which nobody can ever go back on.

So why be so fixated on something, but I respect still, that some people need gods. As long as they keep it to themselves. It kinda represents to me - different gods represent pacifiers. It's kinda like, stick a pacifier in a baby's mouth and calm down. Things we don't know have been known to really upset us, worry us, fill us with fear, stuff like that. That's where sometimes, you know, a god for some people can work as a pacifier. In that world where people are fearing death and worrying all the time, they can comfort themselves by saying there is a Him that is all good - not needing to have the proof of that. That's fine, good for you, but unfortunately, when that day comes and death starts sneaking up behind them they will usually get those thoughts anyway because soon they will have to face their destiny and they know that inside they do not know what it's about. That's what it's about.

I do know another thing, 'cause it was brought up to me by people Norway by a journalist type. Let me tell you something, last year in Texas, where I live, there was 200 church burnings. No one has ever found out why or what. It seemed more like it was unsatisfied members of the congregation. It was maybe a pair - a couple - breaking up and there was one getting back during a divorce at another person in the church, and who knows what. But nobody found the reasons why. It had nothing to do with - when people do that with that intention, they paint crosses and crazy shit, you know. So that was never it. So, I said, you know, I can't relate to your thing. And then he said, but what about the one guy who was from this black metal band and killed the other guy. I don't know the background, do you know the background? He's like, well, no not really. Let me put it this way, if it was a scenario where the one that killed the other did it because the other one had raped his sister then I understand why he did it. It doesn't make it right because it is against the law, and there are consequences when you break that. But I can understand why he did it then. I might have done it myself, and not been able to control myself according to the law if that thing happened to one of my family members. But then it makes sense to do that. Then I don't think it matters whether he's in a band or not. I mean, what about all the other things that happened that week and were mentioned in the paper. Why do you bring up this stuff just because the guy was in a band? That's why it gets sensationalized. Then I told him, in Dallas yesterday, four people got murdered, and two of them over a hot cab, and another one over a jacket. I mean, talk about insanity. You're talking about two guys fighting for a knife, and one kills the other with the knife. We don't even know what their quarrel was about.

So it gets blown out of proportion big time, just because "it's black metal, it must be bad." Most of those black metal bands I have met - what they're about is shock effect. They want to shock people into thinking about things, which I kind of respect. They have their ways of doing it, and I wouldn't write the lyrics that way, but that doesn't mean I condemn their way of writing their lyrics. They do certainly create a stir and it make some people get bent out of shape. When I talk to them, they are just as down to earth as anyone else is and calm and very intelligent people. But that, you know, it's those songs, they create those facades.

I mean, the holiest priest, standing with his facade in church, nobody knows that he has been false, or what he has been doing. Nobody knows. My god, do we have a few scenarios like that. Where I'm like, oh my god, you put on a nice coat and people think you're a nice person; you put on rags and people take it to mean you're bad person. That's always bothered me. I hate that kind of stuff. It's kinda like, if I, for once, want to go to a nice restaurant, and get a nice expensive meal, once you step up there and they say like, "Ooh, no, you can't come in here without a tie." What? What does that have to do with it. I probably have much more money than you have, standing in the doorway with your tie on. Does that make you better than me? That is such a crutch. I don't own a tie, I never will, I hate wearing ties.

I can probably learn a lot more from speaking to a guy who lives under a bridge, than I could from this snobbish executive from some office, you know, who doesn't want to talk to me because I'm not wearing a tie. Now we' re in to talking about life philosophy, right? And how human beings act with such strange views. That's what King Diamond is all about. That's the underlying theme in all the King Diamond albums. Then those are molded into a horror story so that if you just want a story that hopefully interests you, it's there, if you want to dig a little deeper, it's there.

On 'Fatal Portrait', our first album, it deals with a lot of jealousy. 'Abigail' - it used to be if you were born outside of marriage, you're called a bastard - it was inspired by something my mom told me. 'Them' and 'Conspiracy' is about greed. You can get it on all kinds of stuff. I even dealt with child abuse because it made me sick to see how child abusers were being released from jail and go straight out the next day after being released and do the same thing again destroying another young kid's life.

But that's my point of view. I raise the questions in a story and I don't say in the stories what I think is right or wrong because I respect human beings' individuality. I want to be respected for being an individual and having my own thoughts and ideas, so therefore, I know that I have to respect others people's opinions and ideas about things too. What individual means is one of a kind. It's an interesting world to observe, you know. Different human beings are very interesting to observe. I don't think I'll ever run out of material to write about. (laughs) All I have to do is keep my eyes open and look around me.

LINKS

CREDITS