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On the 7th day of July 1777, Abigail LaFey was first born dead. Meanwhile, on the 16th day of June in 1956, legendary shock rocker and innovator Kim Bendix Petersen, who you know better as King Diamond, was born very much alive, with a spirit and imagination that would later serve as the basis for his groundbreaking contributions to heavy metal.

Prior to King Diamond's entry into the world of hard rock and heavy metal, artists such as KISS and Alice Cooper were shocking audiences around the world with corpsepaint and horror-themed theatrics. Taking a cue from his predecessors, Diamond experimented with dark and dramatical stage shows as far back as his time in Black Rose, a band he had joined almost a full decade prior to the formation of Mercyful Fate and from which Diamond recycled music for Mercyful Fate's debut album. What separated Diamond from his early role models was not just his bone-chilling and seemingly impossible falsetto vocals, but his blatant incorporation of Satanism and horror fantasy, making King Diamond an innovator in his own right.

Mercyful Fate's debut album, Melissa, is widely regarded as a seminal metal album. While the coupling of the galloping riffage and macabre imagery were integral towards setting the tone for the then-embryonic genre, the genuine conviction behind Diamond's rampant themes of occultism was the most essential ingredient. At the time, Venom were also heavily employing Satanic content in their lyrics, but Diamond injected an approach that was more authentic as he practiced Satanism and followed the culture's philosophies, something that was uncommon for musical artists at the time.

Diamond carried his persona over to his eponymous solo project, for which he began writing more about his own fantasies and encounters with the paranormal. He wrote epic concept albums with story-telling abilities that could rival the morbid musings of H.P. Lovecraft. Diamond also used his solo project to integrate more symphonic melodies to his music, sometimes even teetering on the lines between speed and power metal.

Today, we are celebrating the legend on his 61st birthday by reflecting on his early years. Below, you can watch a video of King Diamond performing Mercyful Fate's "Evil" live in 1986, only three years after the release of Melissa. Check it out.

August Burns Red are hoping to score a spot as contestants on Family Feud, the ABC game show hosted by Steve Harvey. The band have compiled a three-and-a-half-minute long submission video, in which they set out to prove that they are a family, despite not being blood related. The hilarious clip can be seen below.

"We're trying to get on Family Feud! Here's our submission video. Share it so we can make this dream a reality. (Video by Jarrod Alonge)," said the video caption on the band's official Facebook page.

During the video's opening pitch, the band collectively stated, "Hey, we're the August Burns Red family from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and we want to be on Family Feud. We're a Grammy nominated metal band that's played six continents, over 40 countries and all 50 states. We started rock and rolling back in 2003 and we're about to play out 1,624th show tonight. Woo! Some people say you have to be 'blood' to be family, but that simply isn't true. If you don't believe us, take a look."

The video then depicts the band doing various activities together such as swimming, cleaning the tour bus and having movie night, among other things, all with a comedic twist. The band then show one another practicing for the game show by answering a series of bizarre questions.

August Burns Red will make appearances at the 2017 Rock Allegiance Festival in Camden, New Jersey on October 7 and Monster Energy Aftershock Festival on October 21 in Sacramento, California. Tickets are available at this location.

Last year, we saw the surprise release of Avenged Sevenfold's seventh studio album, The Stage. The band is now expanding upon its recent body of work by releasing brand new tracks over the course of the next several months. The first new single is a cover of the classic Mexican folk song "Malagueña Salerosa," making it the band's first-ever song in Spanish. The track and its accompanying studio video are available below.

Produced by Joe Barresi (Queens of the Stone Age, Tool), "Malagueña Salerosa" features contributions from horn players Sarah Bauza and Rachel Tate Herrmann.

"We've said all along that we want The Stage to be a different and exciting listening experience," said vocalist M. Shadows. "For us, the idea of turning an album into a living piece of art and adding new installations is really intriguing. It expands the journey. We wanted to do the song justice and that meant singing in its original language. It was difficult, but I worked on it for weeks and had a Spanish-speaking friend come over daily to go over pronunciation. I also brought him to the studio to produce the vocals. It was important to me to get it right."

Added guitarist Synyster Gates about the new release, "I've always loved that song. There have been a few interesting interpretations over the years, including Chingon's version from the Kill Bill Volume 2 soundtrack. That's a great example of how a timeless song can be made relevant with a creative modern take. The structure, arrangement and incredible vocal work of their rendition was inspiring."

Avenged Sevenfold are currently on tour with Metallica.

French experimental outfit Igorrr have released the official music video for the track "Cheval," which features guest vocals from Cattle Decapitation's Travis Ryan. Check it out below.

"I just want to make the music I love, without asking myself if it's gonna be too complex or too far from what people like," explained mainman Gautier Serre in a statement about his musical diversity. "I want to make the music which has sense to me, with no restrictions, like a big party with metalheads, electronics nerds, classical and baroque-heads and gypsy violinists getting drunk and joining together to bring the best of every genre."

The group's upcoming studio album, Savage Sinusoid, will be released on June 16th via Metal Blade Records. It can be pre-ordered in various formats at this location.

Deep in Soweto, South Africa, Demogoroth Satanum are making waves as the self-proclaimed first all-black black-metal band, and the group is featured in a new video from Uproxx Reports, which you can watch above. Blasting out extreme metal in a region predominantly known for "a house-music, R&B-ish vibe," the corpse-paint-clad group has faced a hard road, trying to overcome the preconceptions of their community and the label of "fucking Satanists."

But, as the clip shows, they've also faced the challenge of breaking into their new adopted community: the black-metal scene. Racial segregation still lingers in South Africa from the days of apartheid, and as vocalist Sthembiso "Tyrant" Kunene says of the black-metal underground, "That's, like, white people only. That was hard, getting our first performance and shit."

However, Demogoroth Satanum are not only rising above such obstacles, they are also using their music as a tool to bring people together from both sides, integrating more white people into their black community as well as introducing more black people to the extreme-metal scene.

"We're trying to get more black people involved by playing here in Soweto," explains Kunene. "Fuck it, we're tired of going out there. We're trying to get white people to come to Soweto more. In Soweto, that's a very, very weird thing to see. Which is cool, it's working out. They fucking love it. We host some of the best gigs. Apartheid was only, like what, just over 20 years ago. So there's a shitload of tension. We're trying to break that fucking tension. And once our country breaks that racial tension, then we can fucking move on and they won't call us 'white people' for playing 'white people music.'"

For more on Demogoroth Satanum, follow the band on Facebook.

Progressive metallers the Contortionist have shared the official music video for the song "Reimagined," which is taken from their upcoming fourth studio album, Clairvoyant. The clip can be seen below.

The video, which was directed by Erez Bader, sees the band performing in a flooded room along with surreal, mind-bending visuals.

Speaking with Revolver about Clairvoyant, keyboardist Eric Guenther said, "A wise person once said that you're never really finished — you just have to stop. We definitely understood that saying on this record, because even though we've had more time to make it than in the past, we've still been obsessing over the details until the last possible minute.

"People who have heard it have said that it sounds like a natural progression for the band. What we're doing does feel new for everyone in the band, in a way that's super-exciting. We are making some strong-arm decisions to go in certain artistic directions, and the fact that we're stretching some different muscles is encouraging to me. There's always that lingering feeling of, 'Are we going the right direction with this?' But we're really going for something here that's a little different."

Vocalist Mike Lessard added, "I think some bands get caught up in thinking that they've got to stick to the same sound as their last record," adds Lessard, "but we've always been a band that's embraced change. We don't phone it in at all; we definitely go in there and try to make the best thing we possibly can. We wanted to write a record that we could be proud of—and at the end of the day, I think we did that."

Clairvoyant will be released on September 15th via Entertainment One Music/Good Fight Music. The albu can be pre-ordered digitally at this location or physically here and here.

Rock Im Park Festival took place over the weekend, June 2nd through June 4th, in Nuremberg, Germany. During Prophets of Rage's June 3 performance at the fest, System of a Down singer Serj Tankian joined the band to perform Audioslave's "Like a Stone" to pay tribute to late singer Chris Cornell. Video footage of the performance can be seen below.

Tankian and Cornell both contributed music to the soundtrack for the film The Promise, the latter of whom penned the movie's title track and main theme song. During an interview with Rolling Stone, Tankian spoke of the last time he saw the late singer, which was during the film's red carpet premiere in Los Angeles on April 12. "He was doing great, doing press – fighting the good fight", Tankian said. "We had this long chat, sitting next to each other." He commented that Cornell was "one of those guys," who "tried to make everyone in the room feel comfortable with themselves. He was generous that way, with his emotions and time."

He added that Cornell told him, "'I'm really excited. I'm doing this tour with Soundgarden. I've got these other ideas.' He had plans, man."

The Soundgarden and Audioslave frontman died by suicide on May 18th.

Former Pantera bassist Rex Brown has shared the official music video for "Train Song," which is the second single from his forthcoming debut solo record, Smoke on This... The video can be seen below.

Directed by Justin Reich (Zakk Wylde, Ace Frehley), the video sees Brown delivering an energetic performance in greyscale. "It was a frickin' blast working on this with Justin," said Brown. "I always hated the sitting around and waiting mentality, but Justin and his crew made it incredibly easy and very productive! This first video shows a ton of power and Justin captured it all with no hesitation."

Speaking about the album in a statement, Brown explained, "My motto these days is 'Shake some shit up.' I've had my ups and downs, like anybody in this business. I wanted to feel like a true artist again, where I can write and record songs without worrying about any of the bullshit. This is just something else I'm doing for fun, man. And musical Freedom. Fun has to come into it or I'm not going to do it. I've had a tremendous career and now I feel like I'm twenty-five years old again. This has given me that freedom I needed.

"I've got so much more in me. I'm just getting my feet wet."

Brown tracked the lead vocals, rhythm guitars and bass while working alongside guitarist and songwriter Lance Harvill and drummer Christopher Williams (Accept, Blackfoot). "Lance was and is, my main man on this. Everything we did was finely tuned, both musically and brotherly," he said.

Smoke on This… will be released on July 28th via Entertainment One Music (eOne Music.) Physical copies can be pre-ordered here while digital pre-orders are available at this location.

Metalcore outfit Eighteen Visions have released an official music video, which is directed and edited by Michael R. Garcia, for the track "Live Again." Check it out below.

Their sixth studio album, XVIII, drops today via Rise Records. The album signifies the first new music from the band in over 10 years.

Eighteen Visions will commemorate the record's debut with a live performance at The Observatory in their hometown of Orange County, California tonight. The performance will be the band's first since their 2007 show at Chain Reaction in Orange County, which was thought to be their final show ever. Tickets are still available at this location.

XVIII can be purchased in various formats at this location.