Mercyful Fate: In The Shadows (white vinyl) [METAL BLADE]

Why you'll love it

This edition presses the album on white vinyl. In the Shadows was the Danish band's first album since reuniting in 1992, and it brought King Diamond's horror storytelling into the Mercyful Fate fold.

This edition

• White vinyl

About the album

Reunions don't always come with this much ambition. Mercyful Fate regrouped in 1992 with King Diamond, Hank Shermann, Michael Denner and Timi Hansen, signed with Metal Blade, and made a third album that swapped straight occult themes for conceptual horror tales, the kind King had been spinning with his own band. It arrived in June 1993.

"Egypt" opens in grand style, "The Bell Witch" retells the old Tennessee legend, and "The Old Oak," "A Gruesome Time" and "Legend of the Headless Rider" keep the campfire going. John Marshall adds harpsichord to "Is That You Melissa," Morten Nielsen drums on most of the record, and fellow Dane Lars Ulrich of Metallica sits in on the re-recorded "Return of the Vampire." King, Shermann and Tim Kimsey produced, and Torbjorn Jorgensen painted the cover. Eddy Schreyer mastered it at Future Disc in Los Angeles.

Shermann and Denner's twin guitars are as sharp as ever, and King's falsetto soars over the lot. Metallica were big enough fans to cut a whole Mercyful Fate medley a few years later, which counts as a glowing reference.

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

Tracklist

Listen

On Metal Blade (cat# 3984-25025-1), a reissue of the 1993 album.