Melissa - Mercyful Fate

 

Provenance: This one's easy - as a consequence of hearing the Mercyful Fate medley from Metallica's Garage Inc. album, I really had no choice but to get this bad boy by Denmark's finest.

Review: This whips ass.

Genuinely, I could leave it there and consider it a suitable review. Why expend a bunch of bytes and bloviation on Melissa when anybody with one working lughole could tell you that this smokes?

The album cover is cool; King Diamond (lead screamer) looks like some unholy mashup of Ace Frehley, Rob Halford and Dave Vanian; and a simple rundown of the track listing should give one a flavour as to how motherfucking incredible this platter is going to be: 'Evil', 'Curse of the Pharaohs', 'Into The Coven', 'At The Sound of the Demon Bell'...it goes on, but I could just halt here and let those marinade in your brainbox for a while.

I often have the albums on loud when I'm reviewing them. This one, however, was cranked to distinctly un-neighbourly volumes, and I'm banking on either being taken down by an armed response unit or being worshipped by the locals as the true spawn of Wotan. 

Perhaps you might appreciate some context around this sulphurous little beauty; this is Mercyful Fate's debut album, released in 1983 just around the time that the New Wave of British Heavy Metal was losing momentum. However, this makes Melissa contemporaneous with some important Euro-metal developments, not least of all the release of  German outfit Accept's Balls To The Wall. I highlight this album in particular because Accept shared with Mercyful Fate a sensibility that includes classical influences. This represents something of a break from most NWOBHM bands, who still looked towards the pentatonic-based hard rock of the 1970s for musical cues.

Which isn't to say that Melissa doesn't sound like a NWOBHM release - it absolutely does for the most part. However, unlike the Roundhouse mob, who flirted with demonic imagery without ever really going the whole hog, the Mercyful Fate of Melissa definitively choose the left-hand path, and in doing so would influence bands like Morbid Angel and one of my faves, Death. They're probably just pipped to the post of black metal pioneers by Venom, but as a listening experience Venom suck whilst this slaps, so let's call Mercyful Fate the first good black metal band.

Why? Because they're songs are full of Tonka-truck sized riffs, banshee screams and some inventive soloing from guitarist Hank Sherman. Really, King's vocals cannot be emphasised enough - his mid-range is characterful (and not unlike fellow Scandinavian Tobias Forge of Ghost, tonally speaking) but it's the Halford-esque falsetto that powers these tracks to new heights. There are great King Diamond moments all over the shop, but probably the bit that tickles me most is on 'Black Funeral' where he first sings "Oh, hail Satan" in his chest voice, and then replies to himself with "YES, HAIL SATAN!" in his ghoul-shriek. Stryper never did anything half this fun, and that's why Lucifer, Son of the Morning, is winning the rock 'n' roll stakes.

As mentioned before, the riffage is supreme and each song has about a million great examples. My favourites are probably those that underpin the chorus to 'Into The Coven' (one of the wretched PMRC's so-called 'Filthy Fifteen' songs) and the bit in 'Satan's Fall' where King spits "Bringing the blood of a newborn child!", plus virtually every moment in 'Curse of the Pharaohs' (sample lyric: "Don't touch, never ever steal / Unless, you're in for the kill"), a song that should be the Danish national anthem. (NB: having said that, Denmark's national anthem does have some pretty heavy metal lyrics; don't let "There is a lovely country" fool you, the rest of it rips.)

All this winds up with the strange, chilling tale of the title character, Melissa, who we are told is a witch and it is heavily implied that she's been executed for her eldritch practices. But is she truly gone...? Great business, all told. I can't get enough of this. As it so happens, King Diamond used to own a human skull he named Melissa; par for the course, one could surmise, for guy who also has a microphone stand made from human leg bones. Plus, after leaving Mercyful Fate he did a bonkers track about his "grandmaaaaaa!". Essential heavy metal.

 

Balls To The Wall - Accept

Provenance: Bought this in preparation for an Udo Dirkschneider gig in May 2016, which was billed as his last time ever singing Accept material (beard on).

Review: I have a lingering affection for Germany, having spent some considerable time there in the early years of this century. Most of it was spent in Berlin. Waking up each morning I would turn on the radio, tuned to Spree FM, and waited for my morning dose of Depeche Mode. I was rarely disappointed. If the Basildon gloomsters failed to make an appearance I could always look forward to Phil Collins, such was the predictability of Spree FM.

I spun the dial this way and that in search of something with a bit more welly. No cigar. Germany has a strong rock and metal heritage but it seemed, at least in those days, that nobody was willing to give it an airing on the airwaves. Speaking to people, you got the impression that German rock was a bit of an embarrassment. Rammstein had a certain amount of cultural capital, but any mention of the Scorpions was likely to elicit a wry chuckle and a flippant remark about 'Winds of Change'. Fair enough, it's a shit song alright, but the Scorps had some great material and remain to this day a solid live act. Nobody knew who Accept were.

What a shame. During the 1980s Accept released a trilogy of brilliant albums, of which Balls To The Wall ranks at the forefront. I'll go one further as to say it was one of the best metal albums of the entire decade, by any band. Accept took the hard-driving metal template and twisted it around eminently hummable choruses. The production is crisp. It doesn't hurt that the title track is a true metal classic.

In addition, Accept had a secret weapon - vocalist Udo Dirkschneider. Along with Halford, Dio and Dickinson he was one of the decade's most distinctive singers, which is just as well as he w.as a strange looking character. Here he is wearing his Action Man pyjamas, demonstrating just why he was so important to the overall Accept sound. That razored larynx, permanently pitched between a snarl and a scream, gives the album an added element of aggression and helps to elevate Accept's primo output to the top tier of metal.

Dirkschneider's lacerating vocal style is first heard in the chorus to 'Balls To The Wall', a wonderful mid-paced prowler with a huge intro riff and numerous screech-along moments. 'London Leatherboys' sounds like Killing Machine era Judas Priest, it's fist-pump chorus simultaneously preposterous and irresistible. Elsewhere, 'Love Child' is a lacerating head-rush (and one of the few metal songs of the age to tackle the issue of sexuality) whilst 'Winter Dreams' is a stately, strangely affecting conclusion to the album that transports the listener to Udo's own personal alpine fantasyland.

Yet it's an inescapable fact that this album is also pretty funny, due in no small part to the less-than-fluent English deployed throughout. Commercial realities meant that Accept needed to sing in English if they were to entertain any notion of success outside of their home territory. One of my favourite lines in the entirety of recorded music occurs early on, when Dirkschneider mutters "let's plug a bomb in everyone's ass. 'London Leatherboys' is a hot cut fresh from the Tower of Babel, its title alone veering dangerously into Tobias Funke territory. 'Head Over Heels' manage to sound both incomprehensible and perverse at the same time.

What the fuck, though. I couldn't write a song in German. It's all rather churlish to make fun when the music is so bloody excellent. I had the good fortune of seeing Udo Dirkschneider in London this year playing Accept songs for the final time (or so he says). That a large swathe of Balls To The Wall got an airing is testament to the popularity and durability of this release. When his band played 'Balls To The Wall' the crowd went nuts. I went nuts. An essential part of any serious metaller's collection.