Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #88746 in Digital Music Album
• Released on: 2007-02-06
• Running time: 0 seconds

Customer Reviews

Rushed overview of Mercyful Fate's Roadrunner days
Roadrunner Records isn't really Roadrunner Records these days, but this "Best Of" of Mercyful Fate is exactly what it says on the front of the CD package: the roots of Roadrunner Records. Arguably one of the most underrated, but revered, acts in metal history, this compilation compiles various material from the Roadrunner releases "The Beginning", "Melissa", "Don't Break the Oath", and "Return of the Vampire". There's no bonuses included here aside from some liner notes, and you'd figure the way CD's are produced these days that a few "rare demos" or live or unreleased tracks would have been included, but it seems like Roadrunner rushed this one out just like they did with the King Diamond compilation. The tracks that any Fate fan would expect to be on a best of are here: "Evil", "Satan's Fall", "Nuns Have No Fun", etc., but there could have been more included on here. If your a new fan of the band, this could be worth picking up, but you'd be better off getting the single albums instead of this cash in attempt from the record label which now features Nickelback, hardy har.

narrow selection
Unfortunately, these songs are only from 4 albums: Melissa, Don't Break the Oath, Beginning and Return of the Vampire. And most fans already own Melissa and Oath. No albums from the '90s are included here, like 9 and Time. Now, Beginning and Melissa are sold as one cd. I would recommend just getting that one and Oath instead of this incomplete best of. However, all the songs on this album are very good (I was just disappointed it didn't cover their entire career).

the uber glory of classic power metal.
First of all, I don't consider this black metal because it doesn't sound as weird as say Emperor, or as crudely anti-christian violent as say Darkthrone. Mercyful fate sounded more like Iron Maiden than anything else. The satanic lyrics may have been offensive in the early 70's, but these guys are actually post-maiden, and were mid-late eighties contemporaries of Metallica! I guess they were dated even back in the day. Fortunately, Fate had some excellent guitar epics and a great squelly falsetto singer named King Diamond. I highly recommend this if you are a fan of Iron Maiden, Metallica's "Kill Em' All", or Rush's albums from "A Caress of Steel" to "A Farewell to Kings".