Mercyful Fate men mark anniversary

Mercyful Fate guitarists Hank Shermann and Michael Denner have unveiled a video showing them playing highlights of the band’s Don’t Break The Oath album.

It was recorded to mark the 30th anniversary of the record’s release – a second clip will launch towards the end of the month.

Shermann says: “With the overwhelming feedback from last year’s Melissa 30-year anniversary video, it was obvious we were going to do the same with Don’t Break The Oath.

“We think the fans like to see how it’s really played by the original guitar players, so we tuned and tweaked the guitars and amps as we did back in 1984. This is as close as you’ll get.”

Meanwhile, Mercyful Fate frontman King Diamond is working on remastering some of the band’s material for a compilation project.

The singer said: “I don’t like the versions which are out – I think they have been crushed to death and a lot of the original sounds have been squashed.

“One of the main reasons to remaster was to get the songs better presented on radio. But when you just make them louder – you compress them and lose so many of the details. You crush them to death and I think there’s so much missing. There was the opportunity to do something great – so we enhanced what we could find of the old stuff.”

King Diamond has also detailed compilation album Dreams Of Horror which launches on November 11.