Mercyful Fate
House of Satan
[Bootleg]


It's gems like this that restore my faith in the bootleg market. This CD is jam-packed FULL of classic Mercyful Fate, rare as hell and excellent sound quality (for a bootleg, and even in an absolute sense it's pretty good). Everything about it screams CULT, from the rarities included to the old promo picture of the band (featuring King sans makeup) to the cover which clearly shows the vinyl 'ring' around the center to the liner notes which describe the sources of material - mostly early generations of other bootlegs from King/Fate tape trading guru John Kibble (former president of the band's fan club).

The disc is split into two parts. The first seven tracks are from a 1981 live show, proof positive that Mercyful Fate and King Diamond didn't need to rely on multi-tracking studios to show their genius. Black Funeral, Into the Coven, Devil Eyes, A Corpse without Soul... lots of their early classics are here. EVEN a live version of the 'old' arrangement of Curse of the Pharaohs (like the old studio version that popped up on that "Return of the Vampire" album). The last of these tracks, though, is the grabber - it's titled "Nightmare", but it's not the song that ended up on "Don't Break the Oath", and I also can't identify it with any of their other later songs (unless I'm just mindblowingly lame and don't know about something I should).... killer song, BTW. And the sound quality of this live show is great - kind of gritty, but everything's audible, there's little to no crowd overbleed (must be a soundboard recording), and King's voice is in fine form - you can tell it's live because he cracks in a couple of places, but basically his earth-shattering screams are PERFECT, and his satanic stage banter is awesome, capped off with a reversed recitation of the Lord's Prayer (CULT!)

Good as the first half is, it's the second half of this disc that is the REAL treat. It's got seven demo tracks from EARLY Mercyful Fate, and I mean EARLY - this is before the Return of the Vampire stuff for the most part. Persecution, Hard Rocker, Truck Driver (!), and Combat Zone are all songs that got ditched, but are a great insight into the formative months of the band, while other later songs are shown here in their first incarnations: "Love Criminals" (which later became "Into the Coven") is quite a bit faster and stripped-down, structure-wise, "Some Day" is quite a bit removed from its later incarnation "Desecration of Souls", with a completely different intro (all guitar wanking/tapping), and "Death Kiss" appears yet again, but this must be the earliest version of all the ones that appeared later (on Return of the Vampire and the reissue of Don't Break the Oath), because the structure is so streamlined and the changes are more straightforward. CULT!!

But the disc doesn't stop there. The final two minutes are filled with a few interview clips in which King Diamond talks about his voice and how he started his unique vocal style as well as touching on his beliefs and the way they are displayed in the music. These clips were all apparently taken from the same interview, which must have been backstage after a show, judging from the background talking/noise/cutting-up. CULT!!!

This album may be hard to find, as the anonymous bootlegger said in the notes that he deliberately kept the numbers low, but he did encourage everyone who owns the album to copy it for others until the record companies get the idea that we fans ACUTALLY DO WANT all we can get our hands on, quality be damned. CULT!!!!!!


© 1999 lord vic