Legendary Danish band Mercyful Fate may not have gotten a ton of mainstream attention during their brief first run, but they've had a huge influence on heavy music of various sub-genres ever since. Back in 1983, when early heavy bands like Iron Maiden, Mötley Crüe, Def Leppard, Quiet Riot and Twisted Sister were launching a golden age of metallic, big-haired popularity, a healthy but less well-known metal underground was giving birth to game-changing "extreme" metal bands like Celtic Frost, Venom, Metallica and Mercyful Fate. Fate played a blend of progressive and traditional metal styles, overlaid with horror-flick lyrics about the occult and the other-worldly shrieking of one-of-a-kind vocalist King Diamond. The thematic material and King's gothic facepaint would later influence hundreds of black and gothic metal bands over decades. Maybe less obviously, the twin-guitar sound, storytelling lyrics and sly compositional complexities have had nearly equal effect on the progressive metal movement, and can be heard in such disparate acts as the Norwegian band Pagan's Mind (whose 2004 reissue of their debut album Infinity Divine features a cover of King's "At the Graves") and Japan's offbeat ensemble Sigh.
Fate's second (and last for their first go-around) album was 1984's fantastic Don't Break The Oath. The first song, "A Dangerous Meeting" is a good example of their sound at the height of their powers. It opens with an introduction that builds a bit to the guitar statement of the main riff alternating between a 6- and 8-beat time signature at 0:29, unaccompanied at first except for the rhythm section punctuations. There's a brief guitar solo over the riff once the rhythm section joins in full, until King's entrance on the verse at 0:47. The song's story is of a small group of amateur occultists who are meeting to perform a ritual to summon a spirit. They're in for a rude surprise. After a repeat of the intro feel and another verse, there's a brief half-time feel at 1:49 until the guitar solo over a lopsided 4 at 2:03, the end of which betrays their Judas Priest influence with a descending 7-beat scale back into the main riff. After a restatement of the verse and half-time sections, the song makes a left turn at 3:38, launching into a 6/8 gallop with a hitch in it for the first couple of iterations, and then into an ultra-heavy dirge at 4:10, signifying the demise of the seven naive dabblers and the transport of their souls to hell. The dirge is followed by a final recapitulation of the main riff (over which King wails one of my favorite lyrics, both ironic and apt: "Some people have lost their way... Some people have lost their mind!") and a brief but effective coda that closes the song like the lid of a coffin.
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