“Listening to Yngwie Malmsteen, Steve Vai, Paul Gilbert… all kinds of crazy-fast players. And you tried to keep up with them”: Andy La Rocque on why he is no longer a 120mph soloist – and what we can expect from the long-awaited King Diamond album

King Diamond and guitarist Andy La Rocque: The King is in his traditional stagewear, undertaker's hat, crossbones mic stand, totally morbid corpsepaint. La Rocque frets a chord on his signature ESP.

Once he finally opens it up to the public, King Diamond’s Saint Lucifer's Hospital 1920 album is going to be insane.

It’s been a few years since the Danish occult-metal icon started talking up this much-anticipated project – which will be his eponymous band’s first full-length release since 2007’s Give Me Your Soul…Please. The famously falsetto-flying frontman first teased its storyline around a supernatural asylum when he dropped the Masquerade of Madness single in 2019.