Mercyful Fate
Shadow Nights
[bootleg]
A quote from the back panel of this disc: "These songs were taken from very
early live performances, and the sound quality is not good enough for an
official release. You should not own this unless you are an extreme fan of the
primitive and unpolished days of the band. Realistically, this material can
only be appreciated by the tape traders who already own most of these songs.
Long live the King!!"
That's basically your review right there, but since that would put me out of a 'job' I'll give you a few more details. Bottom line - I don't think this is quite as essential as the "House of Satan" bootleg released in 1999 (also reviewed here on LARM), but still fairly worthwhile. This album has twelve tracks: the first one is a radio promo for the "Melissa" album from 1983, and the other eleven are live bootlegs from several different shows of widely varying sound quality. The commercial is quite a chuckle, a nice snapshot of the time ("from Megaforce, the label that brought you Raven, Metallica, Anthrax, and now Mercyful Fate! How can one label be so heavy?!".... my my, how times change....). The live cuts vary in quality from quite good (for a bootleg) to downright horrible. The people who mastered this could have done a much better job with the levels at least - you have to crank one track, then turn down or the next one will deafen you, then turn it back up.... Part of the horrors of compiling stuff, I guess. I can't fault the band performances at all, because as always Mercyful Fate was in TOP form back in the early days. There are even a couple of tracks here that were taken from the aforementioned "House of Satan" bootleg.
The song choices are sure to bring mixed feelings - two songs (Satan's Fall and Into the Coven) appear twice each on this disc; the two "Into the Coven"s are back to back (?!). Still, what makes up for this is the inclusion of three RARE tracks: the original arrangement of "Nightmare" (a better-sounding version of the way it appeared on "House of Satan"), "Shadow Nights", and the legendary track "The Witch". That alone will probably make it essential for some MF-fanatics...
Though there is no catalog number, I've a sneaking suspicion that the same entity behind "House of Satan" is also behind this boot, because it uses similar fonts in the liner notes, which are the same sort of "fuck the labels because they won't release this bootleg-quality stuff, but it deserves to be preserved, so here it is, etc. etc. etc." thing. In it, though, he does say that it was limited to 1000 copies and that once he sold enough to recoup the printing costs he gave the rest away free(CULT!). Still, I didn't have too much trouble tracking this down so go ahead and give it a try if you're an MF fanatic - it may be only for the fans, but for those fans it rocks quite massively and the rarities in it make it well-worth the trouble.
Tracklisting:
Commercial
Curse of the Pharaohs (old arrangement)
Devil Eyes
Into the Coven
Into the Coven
Satan's Fall
Nightmare (old arrangement)
Nuns Have No Fun
Return of the Vampire
Satan's Fall
Shadow Nights
The Witch
© 2000 lord vic
That's basically your review right there, but since that would put me out of a 'job' I'll give you a few more details. Bottom line - I don't think this is quite as essential as the "House of Satan" bootleg released in 1999 (also reviewed here on LARM), but still fairly worthwhile. This album has twelve tracks: the first one is a radio promo for the "Melissa" album from 1983, and the other eleven are live bootlegs from several different shows of widely varying sound quality. The commercial is quite a chuckle, a nice snapshot of the time ("from Megaforce, the label that brought you Raven, Metallica, Anthrax, and now Mercyful Fate! How can one label be so heavy?!".... my my, how times change....). The live cuts vary in quality from quite good (for a bootleg) to downright horrible. The people who mastered this could have done a much better job with the levels at least - you have to crank one track, then turn down or the next one will deafen you, then turn it back up.... Part of the horrors of compiling stuff, I guess. I can't fault the band performances at all, because as always Mercyful Fate was in TOP form back in the early days. There are even a couple of tracks here that were taken from the aforementioned "House of Satan" bootleg.
The song choices are sure to bring mixed feelings - two songs (Satan's Fall and Into the Coven) appear twice each on this disc; the two "Into the Coven"s are back to back (?!). Still, what makes up for this is the inclusion of three RARE tracks: the original arrangement of "Nightmare" (a better-sounding version of the way it appeared on "House of Satan"), "Shadow Nights", and the legendary track "The Witch". That alone will probably make it essential for some MF-fanatics...
Though there is no catalog number, I've a sneaking suspicion that the same entity behind "House of Satan" is also behind this boot, because it uses similar fonts in the liner notes, which are the same sort of "fuck the labels because they won't release this bootleg-quality stuff, but it deserves to be preserved, so here it is, etc. etc. etc." thing. In it, though, he does say that it was limited to 1000 copies and that once he sold enough to recoup the printing costs he gave the rest away free(CULT!). Still, I didn't have too much trouble tracking this down so go ahead and give it a try if you're an MF fanatic - it may be only for the fans, but for those fans it rocks quite massively and the rarities in it make it well-worth the trouble.
Tracklisting:
Commercial
Curse of the Pharaohs (old arrangement)
Devil Eyes
Into the Coven
Into the Coven
Satan's Fall
Nightmare (old arrangement)
Nuns Have No Fun
Return of the Vampire
Satan's Fall
Shadow Nights
The Witch
© 2000 lord vic