Year Of Metal #047: Mercyful Fate - Melissa
In my somewhat arbitrary and offensive ranking of Northern European/Scandinavian music producing countries, I’ve always ranked Denmark right up there near the top. I realise browsing Wikipedia’s list of Danish bands that this might be based entirely on Iceage, but I suppose I see the Danes as Sweden’s cooler younger brother, happy to share what they’ve got but not quite so brimming with dorky enthusiasm. Though it’s stuffed with charm and seems to have helped inspire a lot of scenes going into the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, it’s hard to say that their 1983 debut isn’t substantially dorky.
Again we have an act trying, if not to take heavy metal seriously, then at least to bring a degree of tightness and musicianship to the medium that isn’t always there. Opener “Evil” starts promisingly, with a gnarly riff and drums playing with a lot more energy than you sometimes hear in your more orthodox metal. But within 30 seconds, vocalist King Diamond is throwing down the gauntlet to Sabrina Carpenter by jumping about three octaves just to flex. His general level of camp hysteria seems a bit at odds with the rest of the band, who keep things thumping and ticking; all of that proto-thrash attack can’t help dissipating when your singer’s intent on showing off his pipes.
When they commit fully to being silly, it’s easier to understand what they’re going for. “Into The Coven” is goofy from the start, with guitar interplay straight from the court of Henry VIII followed by reverb-drenched warbling about magic and Satan and so forth. The guitar playing is uniformly good to great and there’s a terrific solo, simple and melodic, at the back of this track.
The key downfall to Melissa is that these guys really don’t have a good chorus across the seven tracks. There’s pomp galore, some decent ripping, and for all my previous digs, a charismatic vocal turn from Diamond. But I don’t think any of these songs can offer a grabby chorus that sticks with you. The tunes simply stomp along for two to 11 minutes, maybe change up a bit, maybe don’t; you’ll probably get a solo, and then on to the next one until the end of the LP.
They do, however, have the epic “Satan’s Fall”. By a mile my favourite track on the record, it’s overstuffed with ideas even as it hurtles past the 10 minute mark. Mercyful Fate start at a breakneck pace, then slow it down and speed it up over and again. The riffs never sit still, and Diamond’s more antsy still, launching his voice up then dipping athletically into a growl. Melissa has been touted as an early influence in thrash and black metal, and if I’m hearing that anywhere on the LP, it’s here. While they’re never reaching thrash BPMs, the precision and bite give a hint of what’s to come. It’s texturally very impressive, too, blending harsh and lush instrumentation to great effect.
Not totally sure what to make of this one, then. I can for sure hear how some of these sounds might be of the lightbulb-illuminating variety circa 1983, and there’s one bonafide banger on the track list (which, in fairness, takes up a whole quarter of the album). On the other hand, there’s a degree of drama I could sometimes do without. Far be it from me to castigate a band for having too much fun, but perhaps it’s time we all took our Danish metal a little more seriously.
