Mercyful Fate is celebrating 40 years of Melissa with the first-ever stream of the album's 2005 remaster by Ted Jensen of Sterling Sound. The 2005 remaster has previously only available physically, and can now be found across all digital platforms.
To further celebrate the 40th anniversary of Melissa, Mercyful Fate also worked with their merch company Bravado to create a new line of Melissa themed items that are now available to fans worldwide. Get the merch line here and get the digital version here. This is all in addition to a slew of recent vinyl represses, all of which you can check out here.
As for new Mercyful Fate, vocalist King Diamond said in an interview with The Electric Theater With Clown this past July that it's still in the works.
"There's a lot in the works right now," said Diamond. "I'm writing with Hank [Shermann, guitar] for Mercyful Fate and writing with Andy [La Rocque, guitar] for King Diamond and writing on my own for King Diamond. For King Diamond, it's an album that's gonna be called The Institute, which is part one of two; there'll be two full albums that will be completing that full story. As the title says, it's gonna be some creepy, weird stuff. And for Mercy, I also have the title, but I'm not giving it out to anybody at the moment. We have the front cover for the new Mercy too. It's very correct, very right for Mercyful Fate. It's very back to basics.
"For my part with both Mercy and King Diamond — even more King Diamond, I would say — all vocals are gonna be lead vocals again, like they were in the old days for me. It didn't matter if it was a choir singing on the right or the left side or whatever; they would still go in and pick up parts of the lyrics to progress the story and so on. So it's gonna be anything goes with the vocals, for sure — back to the old style. And for Mercy too; it's gonna be very old-fashioned. Hank is writing very much like the old days. And it's nice to feel that we can capture that again.
"So that's the two albums that are being worked on, that will be done by the time we go out on tour again, I'm sure."
