Description

Double album on marbled vinyls with gatefold cover and poster

In the early 1980s, there were a lot of bands in Europe playing heavy metal. Many of them were inspired by the hot and hungry scene that was the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal that took part in the United Kingdom. And there were also a very active hard rock scene that were inspired by the way of heavy metal that was played in Usa like Foreigner, Journey, Aerosmith and the likes. Mercyful Fate was definitely rooted in the English way of playing heavy metal but they added and image that no other acts had at the time. King Diamonds painted his face, sang with a high pitched voice. The lyrics they wrote were satanic and evil, stuff that only Venom could match. Southern Eruptions Of Evil was recorded at the Teatro Palapartenope in Napoli, Italy on the 25th of February 1984. This occurred before the release of their second album, Don’t Break The Oath, and they preview a couple of songs from their coming album. The European tour had started a month earlier in Netherlands where they performed shows at Dynamo, Eindhoven, Countdown Cafe in Hilversum and Paradiso Theatre in Amsterdam. Then the band went touring Italy for six shows in February before heading to England to support Manowar on their UK tour. Originally, 11 shows were booked, but it turned out that Mercyful Fate would only played the first one. The band weren’t treated with any respect by Manowar and was left playing without soundcheck and they had to cut their show down to 25 minutes, instead of the promised 45 minute playing time. Mercyful Fate left the tour and headed back to Denmark to cut the Dont Break The Oath album. So its nice to have this album pulled from the Italian tour as it then features alot of lovely Fate songs that nowadays all are counted as occult metal classics.

Track list:
1. Black Masses
2. Curse Of The Pharaohs
3. Evil
4. Satans Fall
5. Into The Coven
6. Gypsy
7. The Oath
8. At The Sound Of The Demon Bell
9. A Corpse Without Soul
10. Hank Sherman Guitar Solo