Legendary Danish metal band MERCYFUL FATE played their first concert in 23 years yesterday (June 2) at the Expo Plaza in Hannover, Germany.
Currently on the road with fellow Danish rockers VOLBEAT, MERCYFUL FATE took the opportunity to debut a brand new song called “The Jackal Of Salzburg” which is expected to appear on the band’s forthcoming studio album.
No release date has been set as of yet for the record, however it is tentatively due to arrive sometime in 2023 via Metal Blade.
Alongside frontman King Diamond in MERCYFUL FATE‘s current lineup are Hank Shermann on guitar, Bjarne T. Holm on drums, Mike Wead on guitar and Joey Vera on bass.
MERCYFUL FATE’s setlist was as follows:
01. The Oath
02. The Jackal Of Salzburg (new song; live debut)
03. A Corpse Without Soul
04. Curse Of The Pharaohs
05. Evil
06. A Dangerous Meeting
Encore:
07. Satan’s Fall
King Diamond recently revealed during a Twitch livestream from the band’s rehearsals that MERCYFUL FATE were planning to debut a new track during their 2022 performances. “We’re trying,” he said. “We’re still working on a song. I wrote the final lyrics the day of our departure [for rehearsals], I would say, and that’s a couple of days ago. So the others have not heard me sing the song at all. We played a few riffs from it yesterday. I didn’t sing to it at that time. But it’s coming [along] here. The next couple of days we’re gonna see where it leads us.”
Discussing the musical and lyrical content of the new track, King Diamond said: “It’s quite a monster, I would say. It’s almost nine minutes long. So it’s not just a quick little [tune]. We hope we can play it. We’re gonna do everything in our power to play it. It’s not recorded yet. So whatever version we might play for you could change before it actually is fully recorded. Some drums have been recorded — that’s what I can say. But we will do our damnedest to play it. We put it early in the set even. But that’s something to look forward to, definitely. And now we’ve gotta make it sound correct, ’cause the early demo versions have lots of stuff on that create a certain mood in the whole thing, which we can’t do [when we perform it]. The live version will be different. I can’t do the backing vocals, naturally, that is intended for the song. But that’s also a challenge, to do a version that works live, of course, [with the] vocal lines. It’s gonna be fun. It’s gonna be heavy. The subject is very heavy too. We are back in 1675 till 1690. That’s a piece of history that we are describing — a nasty piece of history,” he added, possibly referring to the Salzburg Witch Trials.
You can check out some footage from the performance below.