Very few bands other than King Diamond can get away with repetitive concept albums without being ridiculed. The thing here’s that you either hate him or love him. There’s simply no other way to deal with King Diamond. His hardcore fans are so fanatic that sometimes you get the impression of people who just do not care about anything aside King Diamond and Mercyful Fate. Once you get involved with these records, you can easily understand them. King Diamond as an individual, band leader and, last but not least, a virtual horror novelist fully capable of creating parallel worlds of nightmares - most of them as vivid as daydreams - thus building armies of addicted followers waiting for more of the same. It’s a phenomenon without successful replications in the world of music, comparable only to the manic addiction of Stephen King’s fans. And here it is now - the new King Diamond album, “Give Me Your Soul… Please”. Literarily, its plot is flatter and more straightforward that the previous one, “The Puppet Master”, and in the same time a little bit vague, especially in the end. Once again it’s a story about a haunted house with tragic past and King himself (Diamond, not Stephen - ed. r.) as an important part of the storyline, which gives him the ultimate freedom (and comfort) of narrating the story from first person singular, only impersonating other characters from time to time. In short, an insane father kills his children - a boy and a girl. Failing to find some rest, the spirit of the girl is looking for an innocent soul to cheat the higher powers from beyond who refuse to let her brother in heaven with her, for according to them he had committed suicide and deserves to go to hell. This innocent soul is King’s... That’s certainly not the best plot King Diamond is capable of, and the same goes for the music. Although songs like “The Never Ending Hill”, “Shapes of Black” and “The Floating Head” are shining with Diamond’s usual greatness, and there are some really odd but beautiful vocal experiments in “Pictures in Red”, most of the other songs like “Cold As Ice” and “The Girl in the Bloody Dress” can hardly reach the unbeatable standards of “The Puppet Master”, let alone the classic haunted house stuff of “Them” and “Conspiracy”. Nevertheless the brilliant guitar work of Andy La Rocque sometimes even saves the album. As for King, he has moved from piercing shrieks since the 90’s “The Graveyard” for good. Now he is constantly exploring his lower range, which, to be honest, is even scarier to listen to. There are so many variations of his voice on this album, that even when the Hungarian singer Livia (present in “The Puppet Master”, too) is taking on the final “Moving On”, you are not very sure whether it’s not King who’s underwent a gender change surgery in the meantime. Finally, it’s a decent album - one of the best classic metal records for this year so far, but it’s not the best King Diamond is capable of.