Melissa is the debut studio album by Danish heavy metal band Mercyful Fate, released in October 1983 through Roadrunner Records. It was the first album released by Roadrunner Records. This was also the first Mercyful Fate effort to get an official release in the United States through Megaforce Records, as their self-titled EP was a highly sought after import, and the BBC sessions were only available on bootleg tapes.

Although Mercyful Fate is often identified as one of the key bands in the first wave of black metal, Melissas sound is more akin to the new wave of British heavy metal (NWOBHM), while the album also featured elements of what would later become black metal, death metal, thrash metal and progressive metal. Melissa has also been recognised as one of the first extreme metal albums, and was highly influential to the mid-to-late 1980s and early 1990s metal scenes. The band formed in response to their record label, CBS' demands for more commercial music. After several demos, the band would release their self-titled EP.

Recording

On 18 July 1983, Mercyful Fate started recording at Easy Sounds Studios in Copenhagen with producer Henrik Lund, "Love Criminals", actually the first song Mercyful Fate ever wrote, was renamed "Into the Coven", which was originally meant to be the title of the album too. The album also contains "Satan's Fall" which, as Michael Denner recalls, took ages to learn and elicited an eerie feeling the few times he heard it. Hank Shermann wrote the music for this song, which was composed during many sleepless nights on his unplugged guitar in his living room. The band kept rehearsing the song for a long time in its unfinished form, as Shermann continuously added new parts. According to Denner, there are about sixteen different riffs in "Satan's Fall", which was the band's longest song with a running time over 11 minutes, until the band released Dead Again, on which the title track is 13 minutes long.

Melissa has been cited as "one of the first records to start to develop an 'extreme metal' sound", and Justin Wearn of This Day in Metal noted that, "With dark lyrics, guitar solos prevalent throughout the record, fast paced and double bass drums throughout, and satanic imagery in the visuals, it was an inspiration and influenced many popular metal bands like Metallica, Exodus, Slayer and countless others. With elements of thrash metal, musical traits you would hear in black metal and death metal along with progressive metal, Melissa was a groundbreaker in heavy metal history for multiple reasons."

The European tour started in the Netherlands on 19 January 1984 at The Dynamo, in Eindhoven.

Additionally, Mercyful Fate met the members of Metallica on tour in 1984, whom they've stayed very good friends with since then. It all began when Metallica, while recording in Copenhagen, borrowed amplifiers from Mercyful Fate and various other equipment. Metallica covered a medley of songs from Melissa on their 1998 cover album Garage Inc.

A re-recorded version of "Evil" is featured in the video game Guitar Hero: Metallica.

Reception

The album has received acclaim since its release. Writing for Allmusic, Steve Huey would write, "Mercyful Fate's debut album, Melissa, took Black Sabbath's dark occult obsessions to an extreme, fusing them with the speed and tightened, twin-guitar riffing attack of British metal bands like Judas Priest and Iron Maiden," concluding, "The band was still finding itself, and some of the songs on Melissa have a tendency to move into long, meandering instrumental sections, but the basic components of Mercyful Fate's influential European gothic black metal sound were already in place."

Controversy

In 1985, advocating the need for Parental Advisory labels on audio recordings, the Parents Music Resource Center cited "Into the Coven" among their Filthy Fifteen objectionable songs due to its perceived occult content.

Legacy

Melissa has been identified as one of the earliest and most seminal examples of extreme metal, and is often considered to be a major influence on the then-developing thrash metal, black metal and death metal genres. Kerry King of Slayer cited the album as one of his favorite heavy metal albums of all time, saying, "It has great songwriting. I love the guitar duo of Michael Denner and Hank Shermann. And King Diamond has a completely unique style of singing and you either love it or hate it. Anybody would have a hard time finding fault in Melissa. It's just really well done." He further added, "There was definitely a Mercyful Fate influence on [Slayer's] Hell Awaits. You can tell by the super long songs with, like, 10,000 riff changes. That was definitely a Mercyful Fate influence."

Track listing

25th anniversary edition DVD track listing

Live at Dynamo, Eindhoven, Holland 1983

  1. "Doomed by the Living Dead"
  2. "Black Funeral"
  3. "Curse of the Pharaohs"

Personnel

Mercyful Fate

  • King Diamond – vocals
  • Hank Shermann – guitars
  • Michael Denner – guitars (tracks 1–11)
  • Timi Hansen – bass
  • Kim Ruzz – drums

Additional performers

  • Benny Petersen – guitars (tracks 12–13)

Production

  • Produced by Henrik Lund
  • Engineered by Jacob J. Jorgensen
  • Mixed by Henrik Lund and Mercyful Fate
  • Tracks 9–11 produced and mixed by Tony Wilson and engineered by David Dade
  • Tracks 12–13 produced by Mercyful Fate
  • Cover art by Thomas Holm / Studio Dzyan
  • Photography by Thomas Grondahl

2005 reissue

  • Produced for reissue by Tom Burleigh and Monte Conner, assisted by Steven Hartong
  • Remastered by Ted Jensen
  • Liner notes written by Don Kaye
  • Art direction by Mr. Scott Design
  • Additional photography by Kevin Estrada
  • DVD authoring by James Moore / Moore Imagination

Charts

{| class="wikitable plainrowheaders" style="text-align:center"

|+Chart performance for Melissa

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! scope="col"| Chart (2020)

! scope="col"| Peak<br />position

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References