Why I ❤️ Mercyful Fate’s Don’t Break The Oath, by Cannibal Corpse’s George ‘Corpsegrinder’ Fisher

Corpsegrinder Mercyful Fate — (Image credit: Metal Blade)

Don’t Break The Oath is my favourite metal album of all time. When we were kids, we would all buy different stuff and dub it onto a cassette and pass it around. Me and my friends, we kept going into heavier and heavier stuff while everyone else just stuck on Metallica or whoever.

This friend of ours, Steve, had the first Mercyful Fate EP [1982’s Mercyful Fate], and he was going, ‘Hey guys, you gotta hear this band.’ So we played it, and we were, like, ‘Holy shit!’ You’d listen to the music, but there wasn’t any singing yet – and then all of a sudden King Diamond comes in and hits the high notes and it was so different to anything else I’d heard.

So I got Don’t Break The Oath and I just loved it. I love the songs, and I really love King Diamond’s voice. He mostly does the falsetto, so when he goes clean, it’s just this brilliant dynamic. That’s why it stands out for me.

I can put this record on and it feels like there’s something else going on – it feels like there’s real magic in the world. The beginning of Don’t Break The Oath, with the thunder and the lightning and rain and everything – it’s got a vibe to it. If you’re sitting in the dark, you’ll be looking over your shoulder. If King Diamond told me there was someone or something there when they recorded it, I would totally believe it.

Cannibal Corpse’s new album, Violence Unimagined, is released on April 16

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