Mercyful Fate’s Currently Demoing Their Upcoming Album
For the first time in roughly 26 years, we’re closer than ever to a new Mercyful Fate album. There’s been talk about something new coming from King Diamond and his crew for a while now, but a recent interview over at The Metal Voice (as transcribed by Blabbermouth) with bassist Becky Baldwin suggests things are still progressing.
According to Baldwin, who was being interviewed at last night’s Metal Hall of Fame gala, the band is currently demoing their long-awaited followup to 1999’s 9. Yes, you read that right — we were all worrying about the Y2K bug the last time there was a new Mercyful Fate studio.
“So, it’s in the kind of demoing process at the moment. Instrumentally, it’s mostly there. And so the next step is for King [Diamond, Mercyful Fate and King Diamond frontman] to work on it, but King also needs to put out the King Diamond album this year, hopefully. So [the King Diamond album] should be this year and then he’ll do a European tour [with King Diamond]. And then it’s Mercyful Fate time. So it’s kind of like, yeah, there’s an order that things need to happen. So, hopefully this year we’ll be able to start on finishing the [Mercyful Fate] album, like finishing it in terms of lyrics. ‘The Jackal Of Salzburg’, that [new Mercyful Fate] song has already been performed live. That’s gonna be on the album. King has done some really amazing things with the demo version that he’s been working on. And then, yeah, towards the end of the year, probably [Mercyful Fate will release] some singles hopefully. Or if not, then next year.”
It should be no surprise to anyone paying attention that Mercyful Fate will have to wait for the new King Diamond album to drop. It’s exciting to think there’s a chance we’ll have new singles from Mercyful Fate by the end of the year though, so that’s something.
As for what those song titles could be or what themes will be explored in the record, Baldwin kept those particular cards close to her chest.
“I’m not gonna give anything away. I don’t feel qualified to divulge that kind of information. I haven’t been told what I am and I’m not allowed to say. [Laughs] There’s songs with names, there’s concepts. I’m not going to sing you a little riff, but there are riffs. There are riffs. [Laughs]”
