Don't Break the Oath
Occupation
- Vocals, keyboard, harpsichord: King Diamond
- Electric Guitar: Hank Sherman
- Electric Guitar: Michael Denner
- E -Bass: Timi " Grabber" Hansen
- Drums: Kim Ruzz
Do not Break the Oath is the second album by the Danish heavy metal band Mercyful Fate.
Genesis
The band started on 30 April 1984, work on Do not Break the Oath and needed for 19 days. Much of the material was previously published on demos of the band, sometimes under other names with other texts or arrangements, and was partly written before the debut album Melissa. Come to the Sabbath and The Oath were already finished when it was released; the band, but decided to use it for their second album. The album was recorded in May 1984 in the Easy Sound Studios, along with Henrik Lund, who had also produced Melissa. Lund, the band again asked to stay outside the studio until he was ready, but this time from the band refused and still came in and did not care about his reaction. Because of their presence, the musicians could change necessary changes to things like the reverb, echo and the song that had to be mixed manually then. The album was released on August 10, 1984 shortly before a U.S. tour, in which both Mercyful Fate as a major band in clubs as well as the opening act for Motörhead played in theaters.
Title list
Style and texts
The production is more professional than on the predecessor Melissa. The album contains melodic, influenced by guitarists like Michael Schenker, partly double bunk guitar solos and a complex songwriting with many breaks. Assign content to Black Metal, there are musical references about the early Iron Maiden.
The album begins with A Dangerous Meeting, a slower track.
The next song, Nightmare, deals with a nightmare that the singer King Diamond had a few years earlier. In this he had fantasized about having seen a black book from which a woman was brought to life. In his dream, he tried for his brother, who was then slept in the same room as Diamond, and screaming for help, but he got out a sound. The woman gave him a sign to follow her, and he felt compelled to do so. He was in the middle of a coven of 13 veiled, shadowy people again who showed to him and said that he was alive of borrowed time. Diamond woke up bathed in sweat.
Desecration of Souls is slower, but with " masticating " Double Bass, the only relatively few contains tempo changes. The A- side of the LP ends with Night of the Unborn, the reports of resting souls in advance of a Black Mass.
The Oath, the first song on the B - side, has an oath of allegiance to Lucifer as text. Although the band Diamond and Denner indicates as the author, the text is based largely verbatim from the Black Mass The Satanic Mass of the Coven LP Witchcraft: . Destroys Minds & Reaps Souls from 1969 Mercyful Fate takes over parts of the oath, the there the high priest of a woman pretending, which ( at Coven previously spoken by the High Priest ) parts of the mass. While Lucifer is it called when Coven with the five names Satan, Beelzebub, Leviathan, Asmodeus and Abaddon, there are at Mercyful Fate Satan, Leviathan, Belial and Lucifer. This is followed by other parts of the oath. The Pledge of Allegiance followed by the quote " Do what thou wilt Shall be the whole of the law" occurring even in coven of Aleister Crowley's Liber AL vel Legis and at Coven put forward as a liturgical song Passage " Sicut erat in principio, et nunc, et semper, et in saecula saeculorum. Amen " ( roughly: ". As it was in the beginning, is now, and always will be, and in the ages of the ages Amen. . " ) From the Gloria Patri, the English translation " As it which at the beginning, is now, and ever Shall be / World without end, Amen. " accordingly ( Eph 3,21 EU) in the King James Bible and Cranmer 's Book of Common Prayer.
In Gypsy, the narrator turns to a gypsy who to see in their crystal ball and tell him secrets. He learns that he and they are children of the devil and she is part of him and his soul. It is conjectured that the song for Diamond could be autobiographical.
Welcome Princes of Hell, erroneously given as Welcome Princess of Hell, written from the perspective of a person, the host is some creatures from the underworld, also known as friends. The text is based on an experience Diamonds, where he was drinking with his brother and one other member of the band and the glass of his brother suddenly rose about 30 inches from the table and slowly lowered again, without spilling a drop. This took advantage of all three of those present, and as King Diamond sees spirits as his protector, he felt uncomfortable doing. Even the later title Ghost of Change from the album Into the Unknown refers to this experience.
To One Far Away is a one and a half minute instrumental piece that is played to an electric guitar solo on an acoustic guitar.
The last song Come to the Sabbath is again of a Black Mass and attacks is the recurring at Mercyful Fate Melissa on the fictitious character, a witch who was killed by a priest and was cursed here as part of a witches sabbath.
Publications
For the Japanese market a CD pressing was released with English lyrics and Japanese translations.
In 1997, the album was re-released in a remastered version. On this there is a demo version of Death Kiss, the later A Dangerous Meeting and was originally called Walking Back to Hell.
Reception
Gene Hoglan wrote in Brain Damage, promise the album to be one of the classics of 1984. The production is much better, the sharp guitars of its predecessor had disappeared in favor of a good, milled, dual guitar sound with some great harmonies and the rhythm section of Hansen and Buzz is one of the most technical that there is, with Hansen 's Harris influences use well. King Diamond's vocals would be able or hate it, Hoglan, love his voice, and Diamond was also a master lyricist. The band controlling the tempo changes masterful, and each song will bring through the punch, which lacks many of the songs on Melissa. In his opinion, To One Far Away would have made a good intro, but should not have a title. As a single negative criticism he called a break in the song Come to the Sabbath, the King Diamond had stolen from the intro to Stevie by Pat Travers, as before in the song Demon Bell the previous album's elements from Travers Snortin ' Whiskey. In the United States Do not Break the Oath reached shortly after its publication there by Combat Records space 202 on the Billboard charts and thus almost only in their Top 200 Metal Rules The website recorded the album at number one of their top 50 of the extreme metal albums; it is so essential and groundbreaking as Master of Puppets, The Number of the Beast or Screaming for Vengeance. The album is considered the best of the band. Mentioned Fenriz of Darkthrone that Do not Break the Oath was for him and Nocturno Culto ( Darkthrone also at ) one of the most important albums ever. He believed that he had heard the album continuously since 1985. The magazine Rock Hard Do not Break the Oath 2007 continued to place 23 of its comprehensive 500 items leaderboard. Chief editor Götz Kühnemund wrote that the album was " the perfect link between the black metal and traditional metal scene " and would be " deified " in both camps.