Mercyful Fate are Actively Working on New Material
Those Mercyful Fate reunion shows scheduled for this summer may have bitten the dust because, well, you know why, but that doesn’t mean the entire project is being jettisoned: the band’s members are putting their time in quarantine to good use by writing, which will be their first new music since 1999’s 9.
With the band’s members located all over the world, the current quarantine situation doesn’t actually change a lot about their creative process: it mostly consists of sending files back and forth either way. Guitarist Hank Shermann explained in a recent interview with Heavy Magazine how the writing is coming along, saying that there are “six or seven” mostly finished instrumentals that are ready for King Diamond himself:
“First of all, King is living in Texas, in the States. I’m living here north of Copenhagen, in Denmark. The drummer is also here, so I work with him in the rehearsal room shaping the new songs. The other guitar player is in Stockholm, Sweden, and our new bass player [Joey Vera] is in Los Angeles. So everything is [being done via] Dropbox or e-mails.”
“I have been working at least the last one and a half years on new Mercyful Fate songs, and I think there’s about six or seven [tracks that are] about to be ready. The first song has been sent to King after it’s been mixed and all the guys played on the song. So I sent the files to Joey in Los Angeles; he did the bass. And then I sent the same files to Mike in Stockholm; he did his solos. And now King has the first song, evaluating for the vocals to be added. And then we will rearrange certain parts to be twice as long and stuff like that.”
Longtime bassist for Mercyful Fate bassist Timi Hansen passed away in November from an unspecified form of cancer. Joey Vera (Armored Saint) had been announced as his live replacement for the summer 2020 shows, but will now move into a recording roll as well.
It sounds as if it’ll still be quite a while before we get our ears on new Mercyful Fate music — 2021 at the earliest — but color me excited! Something to look forward to on the other side of this wretched pandemic.
[via Metal Injection]
