Mercyful Fate
Melissa
[RoadRunner]
Fucking killer album. Get it or die a worthless, pathetic loser.
Too bad I can't leave the review right there, but if I did, that's all you need to know. Back in the VERY early 80s, before genres and demands of 'trueness' or 'brutality' entered the picture, people demanded energy and originality of their metal, and Mercyful Fate was NOT a band that left people disappointed. Their self-titled EP took the underground by storm the year before, bowling people over with a mixture of elements that nobody before or since has ever matched - heavy riffs and amazing solos, adventurous song structures that owe as much to traditional metal as to classic hard-rock (i.e. Rainbow, Deep Purple, etc.), sinister, truly evil lyrics COMPLETELY obsessed with satanism and the occult, and those ever-famous operatic, almost theatrical vocals of King Diamond. The problem with the EP was that it was on a tiny label and very few people actually got to hear it. Someone at Roadrunner did, though, and they wasted no time in signing the group, who themselves wasted no time getting into the studio and recording their debut full-length, Melissa.
The opening song, "Evil", sets the stage for the whole album - It's a whirlwind of mood-tempo changes that manages to stay coherent and focused, based around a core of several great riffs, capped off with some seriously scary, blasphemous vocals and two great, even more scary solo sections. And so on. "Curse of the Pharaohs", "Into the Coven", "At the Sound of the Demon Bell", etc. - you'd almost think Hank Shermann was the man who signed the pact with the devil, because he keeps up an endless stream of tight, aggressive riffing throughout, and his talent for song arrangements keeps you constantly wondering where they're going next. There are only two gripes I have with this album: First, what the hell is up with "Satan's Fall"? Most people see it as an eleven-minute masterpiece of epic proportions; however, for once I think Hank Shermann took the arrangements a bit too far - too many of the changes are just the band stopping while one guitar plays the next riff, then playing on that for a couple of minutes before stopping while one guitar plays the next riff... it comes off as a collection of great riffs rather than an epic song (though it does have an excellent acoustic/clean electric solo section near the end, and the riffs themselves are good - the arrangement is just uncharacteristically amateurish). Second is the production. It's clean, but far too dry - the guitars don't have nearly as much bite as on the previous EP or on the next album, and that limp sound really sapped the energy out of some of these songs (for comparison, compare the versions of "Evil", "Curse...", and "Satan's Fall" here to the live versions on The Beginning, or compare this recording of "Black Funeral" with the version on the Metallic Storm compilation). Still, neither of those gripes undermine the fact that Melissa is a landmark album in the realm of extreme metal, and if it's not in your collection then your collection isn't worth all that much...
© 1999 lord vic
Too bad I can't leave the review right there, but if I did, that's all you need to know. Back in the VERY early 80s, before genres and demands of 'trueness' or 'brutality' entered the picture, people demanded energy and originality of their metal, and Mercyful Fate was NOT a band that left people disappointed. Their self-titled EP took the underground by storm the year before, bowling people over with a mixture of elements that nobody before or since has ever matched - heavy riffs and amazing solos, adventurous song structures that owe as much to traditional metal as to classic hard-rock (i.e. Rainbow, Deep Purple, etc.), sinister, truly evil lyrics COMPLETELY obsessed with satanism and the occult, and those ever-famous operatic, almost theatrical vocals of King Diamond. The problem with the EP was that it was on a tiny label and very few people actually got to hear it. Someone at Roadrunner did, though, and they wasted no time in signing the group, who themselves wasted no time getting into the studio and recording their debut full-length, Melissa.
The opening song, "Evil", sets the stage for the whole album - It's a whirlwind of mood-tempo changes that manages to stay coherent and focused, based around a core of several great riffs, capped off with some seriously scary, blasphemous vocals and two great, even more scary solo sections. And so on. "Curse of the Pharaohs", "Into the Coven", "At the Sound of the Demon Bell", etc. - you'd almost think Hank Shermann was the man who signed the pact with the devil, because he keeps up an endless stream of tight, aggressive riffing throughout, and his talent for song arrangements keeps you constantly wondering where they're going next. There are only two gripes I have with this album: First, what the hell is up with "Satan's Fall"? Most people see it as an eleven-minute masterpiece of epic proportions; however, for once I think Hank Shermann took the arrangements a bit too far - too many of the changes are just the band stopping while one guitar plays the next riff, then playing on that for a couple of minutes before stopping while one guitar plays the next riff... it comes off as a collection of great riffs rather than an epic song (though it does have an excellent acoustic/clean electric solo section near the end, and the riffs themselves are good - the arrangement is just uncharacteristically amateurish). Second is the production. It's clean, but far too dry - the guitars don't have nearly as much bite as on the previous EP or on the next album, and that limp sound really sapped the energy out of some of these songs (for comparison, compare the versions of "Evil", "Curse...", and "Satan's Fall" here to the live versions on The Beginning, or compare this recording of "Black Funeral" with the version on the Metallic Storm compilation). Still, neither of those gripes undermine the fact that Melissa is a landmark album in the realm of extreme metal, and if it's not in your collection then your collection isn't worth all that much...
© 1999 lord vic