MP3: Mercyful Fate - Black funeral
Halloween, the season of the witch - a perfect time for creepy music, a perfect time for some classic Mercyful Fate. Frontman King Diamond may live in Texas nowadays (and has for years now), but he started out in Denmark, so this damn well qualifies as perfect Friday posting material. I'm too young to know what it must've been like to hear something like "Melissa" when it was first released in 1983, but it certainly made an impression on my fragile little mind when I did finally get around to hearing it as a teenager. No one else has a voice like that and the twin guitars of Michael Denner and Hank Shermann are unfuckwithable. I won't kid you - Fate's occult-obsessed lyrics are way more comic book scary than real-life scary, but I still get a visceral thrill hearing King shriek "Yes, hail Satan!" Furthermore, and I can't believe I haven't told this story here before, Mercyful Fate changed my life. Really! I went through a few different musical phases throughout my gradeschool career, dabbling here and there before eventually immersing myself in punk. I blindly accepted the idea that guitar solos are pure wankery and renounced the music of my youth. And then, sometime around my junior year of high school, I got the funny idea of seeing the recently reunited Mercyful Fate on the "Time" tour. I figured, what the hell - it'll be good for a laugh seeing the diminuative King Diamond prance around on stage in his makeup with his mic stand of bones. But you know what? They kicked ass. I wasn't laughing, I was reborn. So thank you Mercyful Fate, for setting me straight, back on the path of righteousness.
Mercyful Fate - Black funeral