Mercyful Fate/Melissa/1983

Metal music is hard to take seriously. Metal musicians tend to take themselves too seriously. Metal fans are often chest-beating, homophobic, illiterate Neanderthals. Rock journalists, historians, and scribes treat the genre like rock music’s redheaded stepchild. Self-aware fans like myself are hesitant to openly express their fandom.

Unlike his naïve counterpart, the aforementioned chest-beating homophobe, the “Enlightened Metalhead” knows he must hide his forbidden love of all things denim, leather, and loud. To admit to being a metalhead is to invite scorn and ridicule from music fans with more “sophisticated” tastes. Rolling Stone, Spin, the powers that be at the Rock–n-Roll Hall of Fame are all tripping over themselves to sing the praises of the Stones, Stooges, and Sgt. Pepper. However, if you’re looking for some love for Sabbath, Slayer, and Sepultura — don’t hold your breath. Even when it comes, like it eventually did for arguably one of rock’s most influential bands — Black Sabbath — it will come long overdue and after much debate and unnecessary deliberation.

So what does any of this have to do with Mercyful Fate’s masterwork “Melissa”?

Mercyful Fate is a band that only a metalhead could love. They are the ultimate guilty pleasure of the self-aware metal connoisseur. The lyrics are over-the-top satanic prose sung in an often glass shattering falsetto by a man in black and white kabuki face paint into a microphone bedazzled with actual human bones. The songs are sprawling compositions, loaded with more riffs than the first ten Black Sabbath albums combined. They eschew any semblance of traditional song structure. The standard verse-chorus-verse-chorus-guitar solo-chorus repeat ‘till fade is nowhere to found here. This is a band and an album that will never receive recognition from the Rock Hall or Rolling Stone. Many will even regard them as nothing more than adolescent shock rock. Others will regard them as a joke.

That is a damn shame.

Mercyful Fate are one of the most important and influential bands in metal history. Their debut album, “Melissa” became the cheat sheet, crib notes, and how-to manual for the metal revolution that would dominate the eighties. “Melissa” spawned not one, but two metal subgenres — Black Metal and Thrash Metal. Any fan of the early work of Slayer, Metallica, and Megadeth will hear their signature stylistic tendencies all over “Melissa” — the wild changes in tempo, constantly changing and evolving guitar riffs, the dark lyrics, the use of quiet passages set against blistering bursts of metal riffage, the understanding and effective use of dynamics — those traits that set the early thrash movement apart from the ridiculously flamboyant and vapid eighties hair metal, are all packed into Melissa’s thirty-nine brilliant minutes.

The album is everything that metal gets mocked for. The vocals, the solos, the lyrics — it’s all here but delivered with such conviction and swagger that the band pulls it off. The album opens with King Diamond’s magnum opus to corpse fucking, the appropriately titled, “Evil.” “Evil” is the best track on the album and really showcases guitarist Hank Sherman’s knack for murderous metal riffage. How this guy is never mentioned in the same regard as other riff-masters like James Hetfield and Tony Iommi is beyond me. “Melissa” is loaded with classic riffs.

At just over a half-hour in length “Melissa” never suffers a dull moment. By today’s standard “Melissa” sounds a lot less like the devils personal soundtrack to hell and more like classic rock. That’s not a bad thing — this is classic stuff. “Curse of the Pharaohs” and “Into the Coven” follow, the later sporting an intro classical guitar passage that sounds plucked right out of medieval times. “At the Sound of the Demon Bell” and “Black Funeral” comprise the middle portion of the album and are also the most demonic lyrically. Of course if you could handle the corpse fucking in track one you’ll be fine when King Diamond is commanding you to “All Hail Satan!” by track five.

Melissa’s most ambitious piece is the second to last track, “Satan’s Fall.” Coming in at just under twelve minutes, “Satan’s Fall” is easily Melissa’s musical centerpiece. The riffs endlessly shift and evolve, moving onto the next before the listener has had the chance to digest what has just been heard. It will take a few listens to appreciate, but is well worth the time invested.

“Melissa” closes with the title track, a ballad of sorts lamenting the loss of a witch and promising bloody revenge for her demise. The track has a seventies classic rock vibe, reminiscent of Alice Cooper. Guitarists Michael Denner and Hank Shermann shine while trading surprisingly soulful leads.

“Melissa” and metal in general, will never receive the respect that they deserve. This metalhead is O.K. with that. Part of what makes “Melissa”, and being a metalhead special in the first place, is that it is yours. If you are one of the few to actually get the music, you are by default, in select company. When you meet someone else who “gets” it as well, you instantly become friends. It is a brotherhood. It is a lifestyle. All of this seems corny to the uninitiated, but metalheads know what I am talking about. Throw “Melissa” on your iPod and embrace your inner misfit. This is outsider music for the socially awkward, the alienated, the disenfranchised — those of us who never had a voice — that is until King Diamond lent us his unmistakable demonic wail. If you love metal and somehow missed this early eighties treasure, check it out. I guarantee you’ll “get it.” 9.8/10