In my last post I mentioned Metallica opening the heavy metal doors to me. Eager to explore what was out there, I got into some older metal, bands like Motorhead, older Iron Maiden and Diamond Head. Now if you're familiar with Metallica, you know they've always done cover tunes. In fact early shows from them included covers from Savage, Diamond Head, Misfits, and a handful of other New Wave Of British Heavy Metal (NWOBHM) bands. In '98 they released a follow up if you will to their 'Garage Days' EP, which was an EP of covers. Two covers of Diamond Head and The Misfits, and a cover from Killing Joke and Budgie. 'Garage Inc' was a double album of covers. The first CD was new covers from Sabbath, Bob Seger, Diamond Head, Discharge, Blue Oyster Cult, etc. The second CD was old stuff, the original 'Garage Days' EP, mixed in with B-sides of covers from the past. Lot of people panned it, wanting a new album of original material instead of covers. I see the point, but I've always been a fan of covers. There's a few out there better than the originals.
The album gave me a chance to explore the original versions some more. I went out I picked up some Motorhead CD's, dusted off the Blue Oyster Cult, fell in love with the NWOBHM bands. Probably the most played cut off the record is 'Turn The Page' an old Bob Seger classic. Personally I have a love/hate thing with the song, but just my opinion. I remember the original getting more airplay on the rock stations and my Dad making it a point to tell me that's the real way to play that song.
There was one track that stood out to me. The 11 minute opus 'Mercyful Fate', a medley of old Mercyful Fate songs from their first EP and album. Strung together it's 'Satan's Fall', 'Curse Of The Pharaohs', 'A Corpse Without Soul', 'Into The Coven' and 'Evil'. The first time I heard it, I thought how delightfully evil. How Satanic is this, there was a band the embraced the devil? I didn't really know of any bands that were so evil at the time. Now of course I can't help but chuckle at em. Musically it was just epic, so much going on, I kept listening to it over and over again. I wanted to hear the original and began thumbing through mail order CD catalogs and local record shops, but to no avail. I waited for a while and kinda forgot about it.
Living in the desert you didn't really have access to a whole lot of record shops, you had to travel down into the valley to find anything good. One trip down we had stopped at a Border's Bookstore. I had made it a habit to always pick up something worthwhile there, since oddly they had a decent metal selection. Thumbing through the CD's I found a copy of 'Melissa'. It was like finding gold. I didn't realize the album at that point was over 15 years old, so I really wasn't sure what to expect. Remember this was pre internet days, didn't have the luxury we do now. I bought it and we headed back up. I always traveled with a portable CD player as a teen, kept me occupied and I had a tendency to sleep on long car rides. I opened it up and dropped the CD in. The cover, just a glowing skull almost, couldn't really tell what exactly it was. Opened up the booklet, 7 songs, strange looking pic of the singer in corpse paint with an inverted cross. Oh boy I thought, this is going to be different. Even the singers name, King Diamond, wow I thought. I pressed play and it was just so different from anything I ever heard. The opening riff to 'Evil' the scream, the lyrics. Then the scream, the falsetto. What the hell I thought, his nuts in a vice, getting kicked in the balls as he sings, what the hell is this. I couldn't stop listening, it sucked me in, threw me against the wall and left me in awe. Every song more and more evil and musically epic. Leading into the final two tracks, the epic saga of 'Satan's Fall' and the haunting 'Melissa', sealed it for me. This was the dark side, this is what I was told to stay away from. From there on out I embraced the darkness. To this day I am still a fan, even though it's been 12 years since the last Mercyful Fate record. Yes the 'new' versions of 'Evil' and 'Curse Of The Pharaohs' are great and I'm glad 'Evil' was included in the Metallica Guitar Hero game. Years ago now I had the pleasure to meet King Diamond before a show in Los Angeles and he is one of the nicest musicians I've had the pleasure to meet.
So for tonight's cut, it's 'Melissa', the debut album from Mercyful Fate. Now there are a few different versions floating around out there. The only version for me is the Megaforce Records version. Which as I type is currently spinning on vinyl. This version doesn't add extra vocals on the final track. Useless fact, which ties it together, Metallica thanks Mercyful Fate in the liner notes of their 'Ride The Lightning' album.
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