Mercyful Fate: Don't Break The Oath (orange, yellow & black smoke vinyl) [METAL BLADE]

Why you'll love it

This Metal Blade reissue comes on orange, yellow & black smoke vinyl with a lyric insert. Metal Rules named it the greatest extreme metal album of all time, and Pitchfork called it '80s metal in excelsis.

This edition

• Orange, yellow & black smoke vinyl
• Lyric insert

About the album

Copenhagen in 1984 doesn't sound like the obvious birthplace of a metal landmark, yet here we are. Mercyful Fate's second album takes the rollicking tempos of hard rock, the neo-classical moves of prog and the brute heaviness of Venom, then puts King Diamond on top, his theatrical falsetto swooping from operatic menace to a pathos-laden wail that Pitchfork likened to Robert Smith.

Hank Shermann and Michael Denner trade twin-guitar riffs through dramatic key and tempo changes, with Timi Hansen on bass and Kim Ruzz on drums, and Diamond adds keyboards and harpsichord. "A Dangerous Meeting" grew out of a demo called Death Kiss, "Desecration of Souls" and "Night of the Unborn" gallop hard, "The Oath" is the dark centrepiece, and "Come to the Sabbath" closes with a flourish. Henrik Lund produced and engineered.

Its occult themes and Diamond's corpse paint made it a touchstone for the black metal bands that followed, though it stands up perfectly well on its own terms. Some editions print one song as "Welcome Princess of Hell" when it was meant to be Princes, which is the sort of typo that keeps proofreaders up at night.

Also at Kops: more Mercyful Fate on vinyl · browse Metal

Tracklist

Listen

On Metal Blade (cat# 3984-25155-1), a reissue of the 1984 album.