The wait for new King Diamond and Mercyful Fate is almost over, maybe. Hopefully.
According to Mercyful Fate guitarist Hank Shermann in an interview with Guitar World, Mercyful Fate has roughly eight or nine songs ready for their new record, three of which are totally done. Shermann notes that vocalist King Diamond and his solo band are still working on the long-awaited new album The Institute, and both that and Mercyful Fate should come out this year.
"That's a really good question, because I really don't know, other than that I have at least eight or nine songs ready to be worked on. We already have three songs worked out, out of those, and the drums for 'The Jackal of Salzburg' are recorded. I would also say it probably depends on what the reaction is from this US tour.
"Maybe we might rethink the order of the releases. The plan is that King Diamond will focus on their The Institute album, but at the same time [we'll] work on the Mercyful Fate album. The Institute is designed to come out first. Hopefully they can both happen in 2023."
In a November 2022 interview, Metal Blade Records CEO Brian Slagel said he hoped to release "The Jackal Of Salzburg" (which we've heard the band play live) as a digital single as the band preps another new song to start playing live. Slagel noted the overarching plan was to release two Mercyful Fate singles on vinyl, do the King Diamond album, and then have Mercyful Fate announce their new record.
"So here are the plans. So there's two [new] songs, one of which you know they're playing in the set ['The Jackal Of Salzburg'], which was supposed to be out prior to all of this [tour] but everything's delayed. So the first thing is they're going to finish up [that song] as soon as this tour is done. They're gonna finish up that song, it's mostly recorded and we're gonna put that out to the digital people on the internet, so you'll be able to stream that. I don't know, sometime in the next few months. So there's that.
"They have another song they've written that's also going to be out there as well, so there'll be two Mercyful Fate songs out there. We'll probably do some sort of vinyl thing with the two tracks as well. Then we'll have a King Diamond album following that up and then we'll go back to kind of the way we did in the '90s where the next record will be full Mercyful Fate album."
