"Le Roi Est Mort, Vive Le Roi!" (French for The King Is Dead, Long Live The King!) is the third studio album by the German musical project Enigma, released on November 22, 1996, by Virgin Records.
The album continued Enigma's trend of blending new-age, ambient, and electronic music, while introducing a more modern, futuristic sound. It combined elements from the project's previous two albums: MCMXC a.D. (1990) and The Cross of Changes (1993). Michael Cretu, the producer behind Enigma, referred to Le Roi Est Mort, Vive Le Roi! as the child of the first two albums, with MCMXC a.D. acting as the "father" and The Cross of Changes as the "mother," a concept represented by the track "Third of Its Kind."
The album's opening track features a sample from 2001: A Space Odyssey, where mission control contacts the Discovery, setting a space-age tone. The album's closing track, "Odyssey of the Mind," features the same intro but played in reverse, a technique used across various tracks on the album. "T.N.T. for the Brain" incorporates samples from Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of The War of the Worlds, although the samples are subtle and mostly heard at the beginning and end of the track. The song "Prism of Life" was later used in the 2023 documentary Close Encounters of the Fifth Kind, which helped introduce Enigma's music to a new audience.
Commercially, the album performed well, reaching the top spot in Norway and making the top five in Austria, Finland, Germany, and Switzerland. It produced two singles: "Beyond the Invisible" and "T.N.T. for the Brain." A planned third single, "The Roundabout," was ultimately scrapped, despite a remix being prepared by DJ Quicksilver.
Le Roi Est Mort, Vive Le Roi! was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best New Age Album in 1998, and its album art, designed by Johann Zambryski, earned a nomination for Best Recording Package.
