Melissa (Mercyful Fate Album) - Recording and Release

Recording and Release

On July 18, 1983, Mercyful Fate started recording at Easy Sounds Studios in Copenhagen for the next 13 days with producer Henrik Lund, who was the co-owner of the studio along with his brother. The band asked Henrik to produce the album, and he was paid $1000 by the record company. Even though the band had more time than when they did the first EP, time was precious and by chance, the band knew the songs very well before entering the studio and made it very quickly. They had to plan and calculate right as they had less than two weeks to record and mix the whole thing, so they really had not much time fooling around. It was an interesting challenge to prove to themselves they could do it. While Henrik was mixing the album, the band were not allowed in the room; they had to wait outside the door, leaving him alone. He then had to come out, telling the band to come in listening to the mix he just have done. Then, when the band had comments, like putting less guitar or whatever, they had to leave again, waiting outside the door once more, waiting for him to do another mix, then come in again with more comments; the band found it very irritating. On the other hand, as Hank now recalls, it was wise on his part because with experience, you realize that too many people in the mixing room is not a good idea because everybody wants their own instrument louder or whatever, and that's probably why Henrik wanted to be left alone doing the mixing. When came the time to do the lead vocals, Henrik found it pretty different from what he used to know, as King brought a little altar in the studio, and some red lights as there was a specific feeling he wanted to create. It was a little spooky, and at first, when Henrik heard the lyrics, he was quite perplexed about it. After talking with King, and seeing everything was so natural for King, it was fine. At that time, the label asked the band to do a cover song, so the band tried Led Zeppelin's Immigrant Song. The band skipped it because they felt it was not working very well. According to Hank, King's vocals were very surprising; it came really close to Robert Plant, so much that you could trick a lot of people into thinking it was actually Led Zeppelin.

"Melissa", the first full-length album, was released November 26, 1983. It has been very well acclaimed by both fans and critics and quickly became a huge hit. This was also the first Mercyful Fate effort to get an official release in the United States, as the self-titled EP was a highly sought after import, and the BBC sessions were only available on bootleg tapes.

The track "Melissa" did not have vocals over a certain part of the song when the album was originally released. But when Roadrunner Records later re-released it, suddenly there were new vocals over the same segment. Also, the first version had a very thick reverb on the voice, whereas the second version had no such processing on the voice.

In December 1983, the "Black Funeral" single was released. It contained a B-Side called "Black Masses", which was recorded during the Melissa session, but had been deleted from the album. As the first song recorded for the Melissa session, the sound was not there so the track was reduced to a B-Side only.