Mercyful Fate Live in 4K FULL CONCERT 2022 Los Angeles PLUS Concert Review

Mercyful Fate Live in 4K FULL CONCERT 2022 Los Angeles PLUS Concert Review, filmed from the front row of the balcony with excellent audio quality (the bass is a little boomy).

Go see them live! - https://mercyfulfatecoven.com/tour

Setlist:

00:00 - Scott's Opening
09:50 - The Oath
16:10 - A Corpse Without a Soul
23:08 - The Jackal of Salzburg (new song)
32:40 - Curse of the Pharaohs
37:17 - A Dangerous Meeting
42:54 - King introducing the band
44:40 -Doomed by the Living Dead
50:39 - Melissa
57:30 -Black Funeral
01:01:05 - Evil
01:06:21 - Come to the Sabbath
01:15:14 - Satan's Fall

The moment the curtain dropped on the intro to “The Oath” was the moment for which the crowd had reserved all its energy. The curtain dropping and the stage coming awash in light revealed a set not unlike the one King Diamond has used on recent solo tours: a balcony perched above drummer Bjarne T. Holm's kit adorned by an enormous goat-crowned pentagram acted as a sinister keystone to the almost Byzantine archways that capped the steps upon which guitarists Hank Shermann & Mike Wead, stand-in bassist Becky Baldwin (go Becky!), and the Mighty King himself lurked. The set, festooned by the lighted outline of an imposing inverted cross, felt like the evil twin of the Hagia Sophia, and was possibly inspired by the photographs on the rear cover of Don't Break The Oath. If the crowd came to celebrate black masses, they'd arrived at the right place. The King's voice is in remarkably good shape.

The breaks near the end of “The Oath” allowed Ms Baldwin (Hands Off Gretel, Fury) a brief chance to both show off and to honor original bassist Timi Hansen, who was battling cancer at the time Mercyful Fate reformed; lamentably, he died shortly thereafter. Presumably because Arch Enemy has taken off in the intervening years, Sharlee D'Angelo's role has been filled by none other than the inimitable Joey Vera of Armored Saint and Fates Warning, though commitments with the former have kept him from joining the Danes on this trek. The Birmingham-bred Baldwin handled the bass duties admirably, nailing each and every part every time and prowling the stage during this performance with Mercyful Fate, as if she'd been touring with them for years. Fitting, considering she's literally from the very city where heavy metal itself was born.

Mercyful then tore into another classic, the oft-overlooked “A Corpse Without Soul,” before performing their new song, “The Jackal Of Salzburg,” which went over nearly as well as all those well-loved heretical serenades of decades past. In fact, this was the only song in Mercyful Fate's set that didn't predate their early ‘90s reunion. As essential as those first two albums and that debut EP were to the evolution of metal, ‘90s Mercyful made some damn fine records that we love to this day, and my only complaint was too damn short to include such classics as “Witch's Dance,” “Holy Water,” or more from Don't Break the Oath.

As fond as I am of bands who rearrange or improvise over their classics , we absolutely acknowledge that playing songs by the book is usually the appropriate thing to do. You know what we could do without though? Backing tracks. And you know how heavily Mercyful Fate relied on backing tracks during this set? Apart from that eerie intro to the opening song, not one bit! Even the bells heard during the interlude to “A Dangerous Meeting” were deliberately not piped in, and their absence reminded us that this is what metal was meant to be: unforgiving, complex, and 100% live.

The set concluded with another lengthy composition: “Satan's Fall.” And the crowd didn't exactly disperse when that exhausting number ended. King Diamond clearly feels most at home on that brilliantly designed set, and all these decades into his career, he remains one of the most charismatic performers ever to wave the metal flag. His and his bandmates' ardor and theatrics took what could have been a mere rock concert and turned it into a nefarious nocturne, an immersive experience that clearly left fans yearning for more. Disappointment was only felt when the house lights went up and there were no signs of the magic returning with an eagerly anticipated encore. And that merch line still stretched into the auditorium.

King Diamond has returned. Long live the King.

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