Dead Again

The career of Mercyful Fate consists of three different chapters. The first one is, of course, their early period when they released their ultimate classics “Melissa” and “Don’t Break the Oath”. The second period spans “In the Shadows” and “Time” which naturally failed to reach the quality level of the legendary and groundbreaking early works. Nevertheless, both records housed a handful of great and / or extravagant songs like “Egypt”, “The Mad Arab” or “Time”. Finally, phase three brought us three albums that are not bad, but, and this is really surprising, pretty expressionless. The concept of the band came to its end. Repetition or failure were the only alternatives and so they were damned to release albums without a really exciting perspective. “Dead Again” is one of them.

Of course, Mercyful Fate have enough potential to perform some good parts. But the occult aura of their classics is missing completely. From this it follows that King’s falsetto is embedded in another surrounding and it does not often work in this modernly produced album. It seems like the old spirit of Mercyful Fate has left its spooky castle and now it lives in a newly build apartment that King has meagrely decorated with some black wallpapers. This is definitely no promising approach. Yes, songs like “Since Forever” or “The Lady Who Cries” (oops, I thought it’s King?) have musically fine parts, they are not boring and they avoid serious mistakes. But this is not the description anyone would choose for “Evil”, “Satan’s Fall” or “Gipsy”, right?

The lack of atmosphere does not only go hand in hand with the less compelling songwriting. In addition, there is the fact that King’s lyrics were something special in 1983, but 15 years later each and every metal newbie was singing about “Torture in the name of Christ” and comparable topics. As a result, there are not so much positive elements that remain. A couple of riffs and melodies are okay, but on the other hand I am confronted with a downer like “Banshee”, which is just lame and without one iota of the fascination the early albums once spread. And as much as I regret it, this is not the only number that lacks energy. It would be not fair to blame the output for being phlegmatic. Nevertheless, the drive of songs like “Black Funeral” or “Nightmare” does not show up here. Even the respectable closer “Crossroads” cannot piss with these big dogs, nevertheless, this is a surprisingly strong finish.

If I do not think about the necessity of an occult sound environment, “Dead Again” does not suffer from a problematic mix. The guitars have a sharp undertone, the drums do not come off badly and the bass guitar also plays a (little) role. Naturally, King’s voice stands in the centre, but this fact is not at the expense of the other guys’ contribution. Anyway, last but not least let me talk about the excessive title track. One can write a monumental killer like “Satan’s Fall” or one can present a song which is simply as three times as long as the others. “Dead Again” (the song) is immune against dynamic sequences and the level of intensity remains low. There is no part with really exciting vibes, it’s simply a pity. Bite the bullet, Fate fans, but this full-length just makes your collection complete. Be clever and do not have any other expectation when it comes to “Dead Again”.

I don’t exaggerate saying/writing that I was one of the happiest people in the world when I bought “In the Shadows”. I knew, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that it would be a blast. And it was, seeing my all-time favourite band well-equipped to ride the crest of the wave once again, even in a most inhospitable environment like the 90’s. The idea for the reunion came to Kim Petersen, naturally, after he heard what his former colleagues Hank Shermann and Michael Denner had come up with as a follow-up to their debut under the Zoser Mez moniker. As these few tracks sounded very close to the earlier Mercyful Fate material, the King saw no reason why the three shouldn’t join forces again, and conquer the 90’s…

legend says that, though, as I have to hear these tracks in order to believe it, provided that Zoser Mez’s first instalment was just radio-friendly bluesy hard’n heavy with just glimpses of occult Mercyful Fate lore. But amen to that very short-lived stint as right now we have to revel in the guys’ new tunes, with three new full-lengths released, all rock-solid heavy metal slabs, with the Swedish guitar maestro Mike Wead (Hexenhaus/Memento Mori, Abstrakt Algebra, etc.) joining for the ride on the album reviewed here.

Encouraged by the success of the Merciful Fate reunion, the King brought his own band back to life, and things really looked great in both camps… yes, the 90’s were for the King’s taking, especially after he hit with fairly strong opuses from both sides in 1996. That was the feat the audience was waiting for before crowning him again cause, plain and simple, the man still had it in him, revitalized and enthusiastic as ever, with high quality music churning out in draws from his two offspring.

Came 1998, and the two teams were ready with new instalments. Thumbs of for productivity, but this was also when things started sounding a bit stale, as though the guys have started burning up in terms of musical ideas. The “Voodoo” was just alright, and the album reviewed here was a tad superior, and not only because the deliveries on both sides have started merging together, like the King was using the same musicians for both stints. Well, he wasn’t. I love Wead’s work on the Hexenhaus albums, and his joining the King’s crew was supposed to be a marriage made in heaven…

and it would have been if the song-writing was a bit more inspired, but “Torture (1629)” is just a lethargic dragging opener, not even remotely mirroring the exuberant energy of previous inaugurations (“Evil”, “Dangerous Meeting”, “Egypt”), relying entirely on the King’s versatile vocal performance to pull it through. Banal monotonous heavy metal tunes (“The Night”, “Since Forever”) following suit hardly generate much excitement, and it has to be a crying lady that brings life into the cumbersome proceedings... yes, “The Lady Who Cries”, a vivid galloper which restores the fate… sorry, faith big time, making even the semi-balladic sleeper “Banshee” sound convincing. The second half comes alive with the dramatic twister “Mandrake” and the bouncy anthem “Sucking Your Blood” before the band try to beat their finest achievement, the larger-than-life “Satan’s Fall” from “Melissa”, with another super-ambitious gigantic endeavour, the 14-min title-track; not bad at all this tale-telling number, the guys inserting the requisite amount of energy amongst the creepy sinister gimmicks and the more or less plausible plot twists, pulling it off with near-flying colours. Mission accomplished, seemingly, although the remaining material easily leaves the trenches with the urgent rolling riffage on “Crossroads” providing a fittingly rowdy finale.

A tense listen for the band’s diehard fans, the sigh of relief definitely enormous at the end… cause this is far from a flop. It by no means reaches the masterpiece parametres, but at least carries itself with dignity and perhaps a tad of arrogance as to pull it off after such a lethargic listless beginning definitely takes more than mere musical dexterity. The biggest gripe, though, once all is said and done, is Wead’s half-utilization. The man seldom unleashes his guitar, both technical and melodic, histrionics, sounding like an apprentice of Shermann’s than a standalone musician. The other truth is that the material doesn’t really allow him to spread his wings too widely; after the anti-climactic start it’s not easy to gain inertia quickly… which happens eventually, but at the cost of the fans’ nerves. Yes, the story itself is absorbing enough to make one stay after the not very promising opening, but a consummate story-teller of the King’s ranks has always been great at providing a most captivating soundtrack… is he moving towards the more commercially-viable, less sinister bedtime story department? With the intention of heading the “Music-Guided Scary Tactics” section of it?

It was a lesson well learnt as well; the man slowed down, never saw himself overworking on both sides again at the same year, following up on the album here with the superior “9” which title at least wasn’t marking the album’s sequence in their discography… still beats me what it signifies… maybe that the record was released in 1999? Nevermind that, the decade was closed with dignity, with the Merciful Fate squad dismissed, and with Wead entering the “House of God” as a member of the King Diamond camp. With Petersen having overcome all his health problems at present, the Mercyful Fate gang is ready to be back in business… no Denner but yes Shermann, and Wead is here again, and someone Joey Vera (Fates Warning, Armored Saint, Arch, Seven Witches, etc.), the famed bass guru, has also been recruited… stellar cast, with another immortality mandate beckoning them. Long Live!

Much as The Graveyard proved the nadir to all those things King Diamond, an uninspired and pitifully bland paragon of career exhaustion, so too does Dead Again prove for the King's off and on alma mater Mercyful Fate. Now, to be clear, this is nowhere near as bad as The Graveyard, an album I have actually had physical altercations with, broken up only when the authorities arrived and took us both away in handcuffs. Dead Again does have a handful of choice moments, scattered throughout the track list, but even those sometimes sound like partial retreads of ideas the guitarists had pretty much perfected in the past. The best I could say for this work as a whole is that it's a competent, high 'average', but it marked a clear declination in the quality of the Danes' musical ideas, part of which I'd attribute to the front man having been so busy for just so long, kicking ass I might add. In the Shadows was a superb comeback, Time was still quite memorable, Into the Unknown solid, and then whoosh...the steam ran out (thankfully not for the followup to this).

The riffing progressions were still distinctly Shermann/Wead, with a huge emphasis on groovier patterns as heard in cuts like "Torture (1629)", "The Night" and "Crossroads". Personally I found the guitar tone and production of Dead Again in general to be solid, a little on the dry side but fully evocative of those moonlit, classy horror aesthetics that the King had always invested himself into with both bands. The producer here was involved with In the Shadows, and King did a lot of the mixing himself, so it's not a coincidence that this is thematically and atmospherically a spiritual successor to the 1993 reunion epic, with a lot of those grooves that just storm in and cut out against the lighter material ("Since Forever", etc). The problem for me is just that the songs lack the extra, intangible 'something' which made for such a hot streak from the time Don't Break the Oath had arrived all the way to efforts like Time and The Spider's Lullabye. It's not an ineffably lazy round of tunes like one will find on the painfully sterile Graveyard, which had a mix like a Tupperware party in Prude county, but for whatever reason the songs just don't connect with me quite like most of the albums that were released before it.

Sharlee D'Angelo's performance here is solid in tone but rather forgettable, I often feel like a few more interesting grooves in his own playing might have supplemented the rhythm guitars with the 'edge' I needed to carve them into my memory. The leads are in general pretty bleak, you can perceive all the shredding and technique the guys are capable of meting out, but emotionally the breaks all seem rather phoned in and fit to order the song structures rather than the phantoms and haunts which underscore many of the lyrical themes. The drums sound good, mostly laying out standard hard rock rhythms since a lot of the material is fairly mid-level on the energy and momentum scales. As for Diamond himself, he gives the usual versatile performance, but doesn't seem to imbue a lot of the individual lines and stories with the same level of personality you'd remember from Melissa, or Don't Break the Oath, or even Fatal Portrait. On a technical level, most elements that went into this recording don't sound out of place or digressive from the three full-lengths before it, but once you get beneath the surface it just seems a bit hollow...

Even on the ambitious 14-minute title track, which is a jumbled mesh of mundane progressive rock swells, corny narratives and a few seconds of the most inspired and excellent harmonies to be found here. Others, like "Fear" start off really ripe and then grow progressively less compelling, while a tune like "The Lady Who Cries" is rather a dud that I struggle to remember at all. What I find most curious is that I find King Diamond at its heights and lows to be better and worse than Mercyful Fate. Abigail and The Eye just marginally surpass Don't Breath the Oath in my estimation, though I realize that's not the Officially Approved Opinion™; but on the other hand, records like Give Me Your Soul... and the dreaded Graveyard aren't fit to spit-shine Dead Again's inverted crucifix. So, as gloomy as I might have made my position seem in the opening paragraph, it's a testament to this band, that even the album I'm least likely to appreciate in their catalog, still isn't entirely a drag. In fact, this would make a pretty solid 4-5 track EP if all the better licks and vocal hooks were abridged. But it remains In the Shadows' less attractive younger sister, safe to propose to if you blew it when you were dating the original, but in the back of your mind, you'll always be wondering where that might have led if you just weren't such an asshole... And, yeah, I realize 'sister' is probably a bad choice of words when discussing the Mercyful/Diamond canon.

-autothrall
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For me this album was 'that' album, what got me into Mercyful Fate. I already had few records from King Diamond and I knew Mercyful Fate, but I never had heard even a single song from them. So it was worth to try. I just picked some mercyful fate record in the record store and asked could I listen to it ( the cover art did help me with the choice [which is btw. very cool, respect to Kristian Wåhlin by the cover art] ) .
When I started to listen it, it sounded mean and cool same time. Mercyful Fate can mix basic rock riffs to ol' good heavy metal and it works as hell!
The guitarists really can handle their instrument, two shredding masters ( Hank sherrman, Mike Wead ) and it sounds great, expect guitarsound isn't so much to my taste )

First song ( Torture (1629) ) has really great riffwork, with 3 solos to my taste!
Second track ( The Night ) is also a killer and truly best songs from this album. And as I understood right the ''old nick'' lyric part means = Devil, satan.
the third track ( Since forever ) is somekind ''ballad to a friend'' It has good chorus, and in the end of the song when King D says with VERY creepy voice ''Since forever'' it sounds pure evil, like some guy from grave.
The fourth ( The lady who cries ) has very much similar melodyparts what are used in King Diamond solo project too ( In fact the whole album is full of those ). anyway, the fourth track is good, but better is coming!
The Banshee is maybe best song from this album, the music is sad and the tempo doesn't change and the tremolo effect is great little fill in the song, I like King's falsette vocals on this song, Falsette vocals fit perfectly songs like this. Now I'm in the sixth song ( The Mandrake ) the song's problem is simply: It's too long and boring.
Aah, seventh song ( sucking your blood ) doesn't suck ! It has great solos and very catchy chorus ( stucks in your head ) !
And now the eight track, which is title track too ( Dead again).
it's almost 14 minutes long, but It still doesn't sound so long as boooring mandrake. In my opinion the whole songs starts to roll after first solo.
The ninth track ''Fear'' is too medium song, it has nothing to offer for me. I usually skip this song.
The Last track Crossroads repairs the ''holes'' of the dead again and Fear and is part of the royalty on this album. The song ends pretty weird, it just stops, without expections,but It doesn't spoil the song or anything like that.

This album beats few king diamond's solo career albums miles away.

+ and - from this album

+ King diamond's colourful voice
+ All songs expect two.
+ Very great solos, IMO mike wead plays much better than in King Diamond's Puppet Master

- Mandrake and Fear
- Some of the vocal melodies ( only melodies, voice is incredible )
- Guitar sound isn't to my taste at all, but doesn't spoil album at all.

Now compare to what the band has released in the past, this is pretty generic. Of course, there are quite a few great highlights, but most of it is pretty unmemorble and a bit too raw. Yes, you read it right, too raw, even for Mercyful Fate. Ok, now 'Melissa' might be even a bit more raw than this album, but it was done right (or shall I say perfectly?) for that release and as for this one, well....it could have been much better, considering what the band is capable of. The album opens up with one of the 3 best songs on here, 'Torture (1629)'. Man, what great lyrics this one has, especially the line "Confess witch! Confess! 'Yes, yes, I am a wtich. May Satan take you all!!'" It's a VERY raw song, though well played. 'The Night' is a pretty good track with a quite catchy melody to it but other than that, it's just a straight forward, decent metal tune. 'Since Forever' is a semi-ballad from the band, probably their worst out of all their ballad like songs, though pretty cool. Then, we have another one of the 3 best tracks here, 'The Lady Who Cries'. Not only is this track excellently done, but the story is just badass. It's about Satan disguising himself as a holy statue, tempting religious worshippers to pray to him. He hides inside the statue by day, and turns back into the Devil at night. Wicked track! The song 'Banshee' is just a solid, good ol' metal song with a moving chorus to it, one of the more melodic songs on the album. 'Mandrake' and 'Sucking Your Blood' are average, forgetable tunes and nothing more than just album fillers. The epic title song, 'Dead Again' is longer than it should be. It has its high points to it, especially when it shifts tones, but an album like this should NOT have an epic that long. 10 minutes would have done good, not 15. It just gets a bit gloomy and boring at times. Now the last song, 'Crossroads' is also the last of the 3 best songs on here. Very cartchy and pretty damn heavy. Lots of groovy riffs to it, with a rather surprising ending. If you wanna know how it ends, go buy the album!

So one of the weaker, yet still decent efforts from the band. After all, Mercyful Fate nor King Diamond have ever put out a bad album, and I don't think they ever will.

Best songs: Torture (1629), The Night, The Lady Who Cries, Crossroads