FROM THE CRYPTS - ALBUM’S RELEASED ON THIS DAY in the HISTORY of HARD ROCK & HEAVY METAL…
39 years ago today, the very first album released via Roadrunner Records was unleashed upon an unsuspecting Metal World! What does this album mean to you? — E.N. Wells
On October 30, 1983 Mercyful Fate released their debut full-length studio album Melissa via Roadrunner Records.
It was the very first album released by Roadrunner Records. This was also the first Mercyful Fate effort to get an official release in the United States via Megaforce Records, as the self-titled EP was a highly sought after import, and the BBC sessions were only available on bootleg tapes.
Some of the material on the album had its roots in demos recorded when the musicians were members of the underground bands Black Rose and Brats: Curse of the Pharaohs, which was originally titled Night Riders on an old Brats demo, was retitled after King Diamond changed the lyrics originally written by the Brats bassist; Love Criminals, actually the first song Mercyful Fate ever wrote, was renamed Into the Coven, which was originally meant to be the title of the album too. The album also contains Satan's Fall which, as Michael Denner recalls, "took ages to learn and elicited an eerie feeling the few times he heard it". Hank Shermann wrote the music for this song, which was composed during many sleepless nights on his unplugged guitar in his living room. The band kept rehearsing the song for a long time in its unfinished form, as Shermann continuously added new parts. According to Denner, there are about sixteen different riffs in Satan's Fall, which was the band's longest song with a running time over 11 minutes, until the band released Dead Again, on which the title track is 13 minutes long.
Background:
Mercyful Fate was originally formed in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 1981, following the dissolution of the band Brats. Brats had been a Punk/Metal band, featuring future Mercyful Fate members, vocalist King Diamond, and guitarists Hank Shermann and Michael Denner. After two studio albums and several line-up changes (including the addition of Diamond and the departure of Denner), Diamond and Shermann began writing new material that was much heavier than any of Brats' previous work. The band's record label CBS was not pleased with the material, and demanded they stop singing in English and become more commercial. As a result, Diamond and Shermann quit the group and went on to form Mercyful Fate. Former Rock Nalle bassist Ole Beich (later of L.A. GUNS and Guns N' Roses) briefly joined the band around this time. After several line-up changes and semi-professional demo tapes, Mercyful Fate released their self-titled EP in 1982. (This line-up, consisting of King Diamond, Hank Shermann, bassist Timi Hansen, drummer Kim Ruzz and guitarist Michael Denner, would go on to record the group's first two studio albums).
On July 18, 1983, Mercyful Fate started recording Melissa at Easy Sounds Studios in Copenhagen with producer Henrik Lund, who was the co-owner of the studio along with his brother. The band spent 12 days in the studio to record and mix the album. The songs had been thoroughly arranged and rehearsed in advance to make the most of the limited time. Lund, who had never produced a Metal band before, mixed the album on his own, but accepted comments from the musicians on his different takes. The band found this procedure very irritating but, in retrospect, Diamond understands "that he didn't want a bunch of amateurs hanging over his shoulder." At that time, the label asked the band to do a cover song, so the band recorded Led Zeppelin's Immigrant Song. The band skipped it because they felt it did not fit very well with the lyrics and feel of the album. According to Shermann, Diamond's performance was very surprising, because he sounded very close to Robert Plant's original vocals.
In December 1983, the Black Funeral single was released. It contained on the B-side the song Black Masses, which was recorded during the Melissa sessions, but had been deleted from the album. It was the first song recorded in the initial session and the sound was not completely satisfying, so the track was reduced to a B-side only.
Melissa Supporting Tour:
On December 3, 1983, Mercyful Fate were booked to support Ozzy Osbourne in Copenhagen, but due to an illness on Osbourne's part, the show was canceled. Later that same month, the band performed a headline show in Copenhagen as preparation for their upcoming European tour.
The European tour started in the Netherlands on January 19, 1984 at The Dynamo, in Eindhoven. The next day, they performed a set at The Countdown Cafe in Hilversum, which was broadcast live on Dutch national radio. On January 21, they performed in Amsterdam, at The Paradiso Theatre, where the skull of Melissa was stolen from the altar on stage by a fan due to very incompetent local security. Then the band went touring Italy on February, where they performed 6 shows, and on the following March 3, they started their UK tour supporting Manowar. Originally, 11 shows were booked, but it turned out that Mercyful Fate would only play one. That first and only show took place at St. Albans City Hall in Hertfordshire, where the main act crew did not leave Mercyful Fate time for a sound check and for properly set up their equipment. Manowar's sound engineer even tampered with Mercyful Fate's soundboard during their performance, which was reduced from 45 minutes to 25. Manowar refused to comply to Mercyful Fate and Roadrunner's request for better treatment, which forced the band to leave the tour with great financial loss to themselves, not to mention disappointment of their British fans.
On April 5, the band played a sold-out headline show at Saltlageret, in Copenhagen. There, for the first time, they were able to present their new chapel stage set. Then on April 30, they began to work on the next release for the next 19 days, once again at Easy Sounds Studios. On June 10, the band performed at the prestigious Heavy Sounds Festival in Poperinge, Belgium. Beside Mercyful Fate, the bill also featured Motörhead, Twisted Sister, Metallica, Barón Rojo, Lita Ford, H-Bomb and Faithful Breath.
Trivia:
The character of Melissa, a witch who was burned at the stake, appears for the first time on the eponymous debut album and intermittently throughout the band's later work. One of the album's tracks, Into the Coven, received particular attention two years later (1985), when it was listed by the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC) as one of their "Filthy Fifteen" songs due to its perceived occult content. The Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC) advocated the need for Parental Advisory labels on audio recordings that they deemed explicit.
It was in 1984 that Mercyful Fate first met the members of Metallica, whom they've stayed very good friends with since then. It all began when Metallica, while recording in Copenhagen, borrowed amplifiers from Mercyful Fate and various other equipment.
A re-recorded version of Evil is featured in the video game Guitar Hero: Metallica.
Critical Reception:
In 2017, Rolling Stone ranked Melissa as 17th on their list of The 100 Greatest Metal Albums of All Time.
In his review for AllMusic, Steve Huey wrote;
“Mercyful Fate's debut album, Melissa, took Black Sabbath's dark occult obsessions to an extreme, fusing them with the speed and tightened, twin-guitar riffing attack of British metal bands like Judas Priest and Iron Maiden. But the band had a distinctive sound of its own, thanks to the neo-classical flourishes of guitarists Hank Shermann and Michael Denner and the unpredictable vocal leaps of King Diamond, who could jump from a deathly growl to an unearthly falsetto wail in the next line. The band was still finding itself, and some of the songs on Melissa have a tendency to move into long, meandering instrumental sections, but the basic components of Mercyful Fate's influential European Gothic Black Metal sound were already in place.”
Note: The reviews shared here are for historical reference. The views and opinions expressed within are not always supported (in full or in part) by Into the Wells. — E.N. Wells
(Pictured below is the 2005 Roadrunner Records reissue of Melissa with bonus DVD)
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